SERMONS AND ESSAYS 



ON THE 



APOSTOLICAL AGE, 



BY 

/ 

ARTHUE PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. 

DEAN OF WESTMINSTEE, 

AND COERESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ITiTSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 




JAMES PAEKEH AND CO. 

1874. 



.5; 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 



A NEW Edition having been required of this volume, 
published twenty -seven years ago, it has been 
thought best, although it belongs, at least in form, 
to that time, to yield to the demand, and with some 
necessary corrections of exaggeration in style, and mis- 
taken or over-positive statements, to republish these 
Sermons and Essays substantially unaltered. 

Two general observations, however, may be permitted 
on the present occasion. 

I. It should be remarked, that at the time of their 
composition the Author was one of the younger Fel- 
lows and Tutors of Oxford, who had witnessed with 
inevitable interest those ten years of stormy contro- 
versy, during which the movement of the " Tracts for 
the Times'* had come into existence, had run the 
first stage of its course, and had been dissolved at 
the moment of the delivery of these discourses, by 
the secession of its chief leaders. 

In the revival of Biblical Studies succeeding to the 
ecclesiastical agitation, which had so long absorbed the 
interest of the University and the Church, it was na- 
tural that a new field should have seemed to open to 
those who came fresh to these topics from the teach- 
ing of Schelling, Neander, De Wette, Liicke, and the 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 

first dawn of the genius of Ewald ; and, nearer home, 
full of the inspirations drawn from Coleridge, Arnold, 
and Bunsen. 

The conclusions of the criticism of that time, have 
doubtless been, in some points, modified by the re- 
searches and speculations of the intervening period. 
The adjustment of the natural and the preternatural, 
the legendary and the historical, may have been 
altered; the "fierce light which has beat" on the 
authorship of the sacred books may have afiected, in 
some respects, the position of the Pastoral Epistles, or 
the Fourth Gospel, or the Apocalypse. But the general 
framework in which these conclusions were set forth 
does not, it is believed, require any essential change. 
The relative proportions of the elements which formed 
the main tendencies of the Apostolical Age, are still 
acknowledged to be the same. Whatever may be 
alleged against the form of any parts of the history, 
the moral and spiritual doctrines which it embodies 
have not been subverted by such criticism. Whatever 
date may be assigned to the various portions of the 
present canon of the New Testament, there can be no 
question that the main influences of the first century 
after the close of the Life of Christ, were (as the 
youthful author of these Essays and Sermons, following 
in the steps of the great Grerman theologians, ventured 
to suggest,) those which are connected more or less 
directly with the names, in varying degrees, of Peter, 
Paul, and John, of James, and of Apollos. 

II. Another reflection of a different kind occurs on 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 



V 



looking back from a distance of nearly thirty years 
on the vexed questions on which this volume touches. 
"When these Sermons were first preached, it was said 
that serious offence was given by the intimation that 
the Epistle to the Hebrews was not composed by 
St. Paul. Since that time the view entertained by 
Origen, by Luther, and by the chief modern theo 
logians of Germany, has become so familiar, as to 
have been adopted almost as the recognised view of 
English ecclesiastical scholars. This example of a 
silent revolution of theological judgment, (to which 
others might easily be added even from the short 
compass of this volume,) may suggest thoughts both 
of warning and of re -assurance. They indicate the 
ease with which the public mind becomes accus- 
tomed to advances of critical knowledge which, in 
the first instance, give, it may be, a rude shock to 
existing opinion. They indicate also the superficial, 
often the beneficial, character of changes of view, 
which at one time were believed to strike at the 
essence of Religion. 

With these two remarks this volume is once again 
committed to the public. Any further discussion of 
the topics which it handles, must be reserved for other 
occasions, when they can be treated more directly and 
more fully. 

Deaneey, "Westminster, 
November 1874. 



b 



PEEFACE. 



T'HE Sermons contained in this volume were preached 
before tlie University of Oxford in the years 1846 
and 1847, the four first in the office of Select Preacher, 
the two last on two occasional turns afforded by the 
kindness of friends. The Essays have been inserted 
in explanation or illustration of points on which it 
would have been inappropriate to enlarge in spoken 
discourses. 

In the composition of the volume it is almost need- 
less to say that I have derived great help not only 
from the works which have more or less treated of 
the same subject, but from those to whose intercourse 
and acquaintance, as well as to their actual criticism 
of these pages, I would here express my deep obliga- 
tions, which I do not feel the less, because it is im- 
possible more directly to acknowledge them. And, 
if there are fewer references than might naturally 
have been expected to the name of one to whom, 
though not living, this, as well as any similar work 
which I may be called to undertake, must in great 
measure be due, it is because I trust that I may be 
allowed to take this opportunity of vindicating, once 
for all, for the scholars of Arnold, the privilege and 
pleasure of using his words and adopting his thoughts 

b2 



viii 



PREFACE. 



without the necessity of specifying in every instance 
the source from which they have been derived. 

It has been my object (as I have implied in the 
title of these Sermons and Essays) not to enter on 
the higher questions of Theology involved in " the 
"Apostolical Doctrines" of the New Testament, ex- 
cept so far as they are implied in every subject of 
Christian study, but to confine myself strictly to the 
consideration of those characters and circumstances 
which represent most fully "the Apostolical Age," 
by exhibiting as far as possible the outward and local 
image of that which we usually contemplate in its in- 
ward and spiritual essence. To have entered on the 
wider field of the truths themselves which the Gos- 
pels and Epistles communicate, or of the general 
principles of their interpretation and application to 
the afiairs of men, would have required more thought 
and labour than under the circumstances it was pos- 
sible to bestow ; and for the same reason, even within 
the narrow compass which I have assigned to my- 
self, many questions necessarily remain untouched, 
important as some of them may be to the . full under- 
standing of the subject, and indefinite as some of my 
statements must appear by reason of their omission. 
Enough however will I trust be found of complete- 
ness both in the plan and in the subject, to justify 
this humbler selection, which, if it possesses far less 
general interest than would have attached to higher 
and more controverted points, was more easily brought 
within the limits imposed by the circumstances of the 



PREFACE. 



ix 



case, and in itself was naturally suggested by tlie pe- 
culiar studies and pursuits of the place. 

Such historical representations of the first age of 
Christianity as I have here ventured to attempt are 
so necessary to a right interpretation of many parts 
of the New Testament, as well as so instructive in 
themselves, that there has been hardly any age of 
the Church in which they have not been more or less 
frequent. Cave's Lives of the Apostles and Butler's 
Lives of the Saints are familiar instances in which 
the individual human characters of the several Apo- 
stles have been exhibited at considerable length. And 
it is natural to expect that a branch of sacred criti- 
cism, to which so much attention was paid under the 
manifold disadvantages of former times, should not 
be neglected now, amidst our many additional means 
of investigating and illustrating the events of past 
times, and at a time when the reasons for endeavour- 
ing to form a lively conception of the scenes of Scrip- 
ture history have been certainly increased rather than 
diminished. 

The language indeed and the form of such works 
must vary with the wants felt by different ages of 
the Church ; and the requisitions of the nineteenth 
century necessarily differ from those of the eighteenth, 
in which most of our existing histories of the Apo- 
stolic age were framed. Such changes are, however, 
incidental to every endeavour to approximate the 
state of religious knowledge to that of the period in 
which we live; and whether criticism or translation 



X 



PREFACE. 



be the mode in which they are affected, the de- 
fence ^ prefixed to the Authorized Version of the Bible 
equally applies to either ; ''It breaketh the window 
'' that it may let in the light ; it breaketh the shell 
" that we may eat the kernel; it putteth aside the 
" curtain that we may enter into the most holy 
*' place ; it removeth the cover of the well that we 
" may come by the water." 

To bear a part in a work at once so inevitable and 
so important, is pointed ont as the especial duty of 
those whose natural tastes and studies incline them 
in this direction ; and in so doing it seems a duty 
no less imperative to avail ourselves of such human 
means and appliances as God has placed within our 
reach, and as in any merely human studies we should 
think it disgraceful to neglect. Amongst these I need 
hardly say some of the chief are to be found in the 
labours of that great nation from which we should 
be loth to believe that Theology alone had derived 
no light, or that whilst we eagerly turn to it in every 
other branch of study, we should close our eyes against 
it here. Accordingly in the following pages I have 
had frequent occasion to express my obligations to 
continental divines, though of course not rendering 
myself responsible for their general views, any more, 
I may add, than in the case of similar acknowledg- 
ments which I have been glad to make to a very 
different school amongst ourselves. Until we have 

* The Preface (not the Dedication) of the Authorized Version 
of 1611. 



PREFACE. 



XI 



equalled tlie writers of Germany in tlieir industry, 
their depth, and their love of knowledge, we must 
still look to them for help ; and, even if we were as 
much superior to them in all other points as we are 
inferior to them in those just mentioned, I know not 
how we should be justified in rejecting with contempt 
the immense apparatus of learning and criticism which 
they have brought to bear on the Sacred Writings, — 
why we should refuse the aid of the workmen of Tyre 
in building up the Temple of God at Jerusalem. At 
the same time it is clearly on our own resources that 
we must ultimately rely ; no mere imitation of foreign 
writers, even were they as perfect as in many respects 
they are exceptionable, can meet our own necessities ; 
it will not be from the rise of any German school in 
this country, even were it possible, but from such a 
union as the characters of the two nations so natu- 
rally invite, of the German spirit of research and 
love of truth with our own practical life and religious 
activity, that the true antidote is to be sought for our 
intellectual dangers, and not for ours only, but, — may 
we not also hope without any undue confidence ? — for 
those of Germany no less. 

The particular point of view from which I have 
regarded the three chief Apostles as connected with 
the Apostolical age itself and with the subsequent 
fortunes of the Church, is too obvious not to have 
been often dwelt upon. As early as the twelfth cen- 
tury it was made the subject of an elaborate exposition 
by a celebrated mystic of that period ; and it must 



xii 



PREFACE. 



be familiar to every student of the most recent works 
of modern theology, whether treated historically, as 
by Neander, or devotionally, as in Chevalier Bun- 
sen^s Prussian Liturgy, or philosophically, as by 
Schelling in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Re- 
velation. Such anticipations or exemplifications of 
large periods of history, whether in the events or 
the characters of a particular age, are unhappily 
liable to much fanciful exaggeration, such as in some 
French writers on this and kindred subjects is too 
palpable, in spite of its ingenuity, to need any de- 
tailed confutation. But the general principle of re- 
garding individual characters as representatives of 
large classes, and of tracing in all great changes, 
whether Divine or humau, the natural stages of a 
beginning, middle, and end, will not be disputed. 
Above all, it must be applicable to the Apostolical 
Age, of which the characters have always been ad- 
mitted to be especiallv set forth for the examples of 
subsequent times, and in which, if in any period of 
the world's history, we might expect to find a sum- 
mary of God's dealings with mankind, — a likeness of 
those marked epochs with which we are familiar in 
the history of the Jewish people, and afterwards of 
the Christian Church. Of course there is a higher 
and more universal sense in which each of the Apo- 
stles is an example and a witness to all ages alike, 
and which can never allow the work of St. Peter to 
be superseded by that of St. Paul, nor the Epistles of 
St. Paul to " give way by subjection, no not for an 



PREFACE. 



xiii 



" hour," to St. Peter and St. John. But this need 
not prevent us from receiving the subordinate les- 
sons which a closer investigation of the Apostolical 
age and its consequences seems intended to convey, 
and which it has been the chief object of this volume 
to exhibit both historically and in their practical ap- 
plication. 

Lastly, it must be remembered that these Sermons, 
as addressed to an Academical audience, — and, it may 
be added, immediately after the close of the long 
theological struggle which for several preceding years 
had agitated the University in an unusual degree, — 
necessarily contain allusions which perhaps will hardly 
be intelligible except to those for whom they were 
especially intended. I have thought it best, however, 
to leave them as they were delivered, in the belief 
that even for the general reader the application of 
the truths of Scripture to the wants of a particular 
class, would more effectually illustrate their real value, 
than the exhibition of them in a more abstract form. 

It was chiefly with a view to the younger genera- 
tions of my hearers that these Sermons were preached ; 
and it is in the hope that they may not find this 
volume altogether useless, in their studies here and 
elsewhere, that it is now published. And if, in the 
representation of the lives and characters of the Apo- 
stles which it contains, there is anything to awaken 
in them a deeper sense of their peculiar responsibi- 
lities in this place — a livelier perception of the truth 
and power inherent in the words and records of Scrip- 



XIV 



PREFACE. 



ture — above all, a stronger belief in the possibility 
of a nobler end to all our recent excitements, than 
the Epicurean indifference which in many instances 
threatens to succeed to them, or than the controver- 
sies out of which they grew, — I can truly say that 
its object will have been, accomplished. It is at least 
my humble trust that it contains nothing by which 
such aspirations or convictions can be retarded or 
destroyed. 

UifivEESiTT College, Oxeoed, 
November 13, 1847. 



CONTENTS. 



SERMOK 1. 
THE THEEE APOSTLES. 
Statement of the subject. The character and position of 



the Three Apostles, Peter, Paul, and John . • 1 — 7 
Necessity and advantage of such historical criticism, as ap- 
plied to the characters of Scripture generally . . 7 — 10 
Especially to those of the Apostolical age ... 10 

1. As a part of the evidences of Christianity . . 10 — 12 

2. As a help in the study of the Apostolical writings . 12, 13 

3. As a sanction of unity of spirit amidst diversity 

of forms ...... 13 — 18 

4. As a proof of their Divine mission . . . 18 — 23 

5. As a practical example for all ages of the Church . 23 — 27 



Essay on the Thaditionary Knowledge of the 



Apostolic Age. 

Inadequacy of the traditions or of the criticism of the four 
first centuries as substitutes for a study of the New 

Testament itself ...... 28—31 

1. Tradition of our Lord's discourses in Papias . 31 — 33 

2. Statement of our Lord's age in Irenseus . . 33, 34 

3. Criticism of the Gospels by Eusebius . . .35, 36 

4. Statement of the Gift of Tongues in Chrysostom . 36 

5. Chronology of St. Paul's Epistles in Chrysostom . 37 

6. The interpretation of the Psalms in Chrysostom . 37 — 40 
Conclusion ...... 40 — 42 

Essay on the Apostolical Office, and its Relation to the 
other Institutions of the Apostolical Age. 

I. The essential characteristics of the Office of the Apostles 43 — i5 

1. The appointment by Christ Himself . . 45 — 48 

2. The gift of the Spirit . . . . 48, 49 



xvi 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

II. The Spiritual Gifts of the Apostolical Clim'ch . . 49, 50 
Description of them in 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Eph. iv. 7 : ex- 
plained by Hooker ..... 50 — 52 

(1.) As conferred upon the whole Church . . 52, 53 

(2.) As personal gifts, not official functions . . 53 — 56 
In themselves, peculiar to the ApostoHcal age, but by 
analogy, to be found in the sanctification of natural 

gifts ....... 56—58 

III. The outward offices of the Apostolical Church . , 58 

1. The Seven Hellenists .... 58—61 

2. The Elders and the Young Men . . . 61, 62 
8. The Bishops and Deacons .... 62 — 68 



Accidental Union, but Essential Distinction, between the 

Gifts and the Offices ..... 68—71 
Conclusion . . ... . . . 71 — 75 



SEEMON II. 
ST. PETEE. 

Difficulty of investigating the history of Peter . . 76, 77 

I. His character in the Gospels .... 77 — 82 
As the representative of the Galilean Apostles . 82 — 85 

II. His character in the Acts, as founding the Church, 

and as receiving the first Gentile convert . . 85 — 90 
in. His character in the Epistles and in tradition, as 

retiring to make way for Paul . . . 90 — 97 
ly. His character, as a model for analogous circum- 
stances in subsequent ages .... 97 — 104 



Essay on the Promises to Peter. 

I. The promise in Matt. xvi. 13—19 ... 105 

The context ...... 105—110 

1. The Name of Peter 110—113 

2. The Eock of the Chui'ch .... 113—118 

3. The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven . . 118—120 

4. The Binding and Loosing .... 120—124 
Its fulfihnent 124—127 



CONTENTS. xvii 

PAGE 

II. The Promise to Peter in John xxi. 15—23 . . 127 
The context . . ' . . . . 129, 130 

The Charge 130—136 

The Warning 136, 137 

The Address to John ..... 137—143 

III. The Promises to Peter in Luke v. 1—10 ; xxii. 31, 32 143 
The context . . . . . . 143, 144 

And explanation ...... 144 — 148 

The application of the promises to subsequent times . 148 — 152 



SERMOK III. 
ST. PAUL. 

Preparation for the appearance of Paul . . . 153 — 155 

I. His character ...... 155 — 161 

II. His mission ...... 161—164 

III. Use of his example and teaching in subsequent 

times ...... 164—167 

1. As a sanction of freedom and comprehensiveness . 167 — 169 

2. As a sanction of Gentile studies . . . 169 — 171 

3. As a sanction of secular pursuits . . . 172 — 174 

4. As declaring the power of faith . . . 174 — 181 

Essay on the Jtjdaizers of the Apostolical Age. 

The heresies of the Apostolical age, universal in principle, 
but Judaic in form ..... 182 — 185 

FiBST Period. 

First rise of the Judaizers . . ' . . . 185 — 187 

Circumcision the Watchword of the Judaizers . . 188 — 190 

Their wide Diffusion ...... 190, 191 

Their hostihty to St. Paul ..... 194—199 

Their Efforts in Palestine, Asia Minor, and Greece . 199—202 

Their Efforts at Eome ..... 202 

Second Peeiod. 



Eevolutionary Character of the Heresies of this Period 
Greatness of the Danger .... 



. 204—206 
. 206,207 



xviii 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Form and Seat of tlie movement .... 207 — 209 
The Heresies in their Ascetic and Superstitions Form . 210 — 212 
The Heresies in their Licentious and Eevolutionary Form 212—224 
The Answer to these Heresies in the General Epistles of 

St. Peter and St. Jude ..... 224—226 
In the Apocalypse ...... 226, 227 



Third Period. 

Errors opposed by St. John . 
Chiefly Jewish 

The Ebionites .... 
Cerinthus ..... 
Opposition not of individuals but of principles 



SERMOJS" IV. 
ST. JOHN. 

General character ...... 234 — 238 

I. EarHer period — Boanerges — the Apocalypse . 238 — 241 

II. Later period — the Apostle of Love — the Gospel and 
Epistles ...... 241—250 

III. Use of his example and teaching in subsequent 

times ....... 250—265 



Essay on the Teaditions eespecting St. John. 



I. Tradition of St. John's Immortality 

II. Traditions of St. John's Character 

1. Story of the Young Eobber . 

2. Tradition of Cerinthus and the Bath 

3. The tradition of the composition of the Gospel 

4. The tradition of the last words of St. John . 

5. The tradition of St. John and the Huntsman 

III. Traditions of St. John's Jewish Customs 

1. The tradition of St. John's Austerities 

2. The tradition of the Pontifical Diadem 

3. Tradition of the observation of the Jewish Passover 

IV. Tradition of St. John's residence at Ephesus, and of 

his extreme old age ..... 



279-281 



CONTENTS. 



XIX 



SEEMOIS- Y. 

f 

Supplement to Seemon II. / 
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 

I. Local authority and traditional character of James the 

Just 

II. The Epistle of James 

1. Its circumstances 

2. Its object 

3. Its general character . 

4. Its practical lessons . 



284—289 
289—291 
291—293 
293—300 
300—303 
303—308 



The Traditions of St. James the Just, as narkated 
BY Hegesippus. 

History of Hegesippus ..... 309 — 312 

1. Position of James in the Church of Jerusalem . 313 

2. His Austerities ..... 314—318 

3. The Names of James .... 318—320 

4. His Death 321—325 



SEEMON YT. 
Supplement to Sermon III. 

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBKEWS. 

I. The object and occasion of the Epistle . . . 32^^340 

II. The lessons to be derived from it . . . 340 — 343 

1. A,s written in a period of transition . . . 343 — 345 

2. As addressed to sufferers .... 345 — 347 

3. As the sanction of systematic study . . . 347 — 352 



Essay on the Divisions in the Corinthian Church. 



I. The factions at Corinth 

II. The Clementines . 



354—359 
359—371 



SERMON L 
STlje Eijxzt apostles. 



MARK ix. 2. 

Jesus taketh with Hm Petee, and James, and John, 

AND LEADETH THEM UP INTO AN HIGH MOUNTAIN APAET 
BY THEMSELVES. 

No one can doubt that in order to have the key of 
the whole revelation of God, we must turn to the Life, 
the Teaching, the Person of Jesus Christ. There alone 
is contained that knowledge which He Himself has told 
us is no less than life eternal. There alone are to be 
found the facts, on which, however variously explained, 
Christianity is founded. There is the original outline 
of God's will respecting us, which fully to unfold, 
explain, and apply, is the highest task to which any 
teacher or student of theology can aspire. 

But without touching on this higher question, there 
is another, which, though subordinate, is closely allied 
with it, and which, arising as it does out of the very 
structure of the Christian Scriptures, is not, I trust, un- 
suited to the present time or place : namely, What was 
the human medium through which that Divine life, and 
those Divine truths, were in the first instance com- 
municated to man? Is the intervening atmosphere, 
as some would tell us, an indistinct haze, in which 

B 



2 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



all particular shapes are wholly lost to us ? or can we, 
through the mist of ages — can we, through the drifting 
clouds of Jewish or Gentile opinion — can we, through 
the brightness which surrounds Him who was the ex- 
press Image of God, discern any distinction of indi- 
vidual form and feature to tell us what were the 
human influences which first intercepted the rays of 
that Divine glory — what the human characters which 
received themselves, or caught for others, the first im- 
pression of that Divine countenance ? It surely is not 
presumptuous to say that we can. It was, we may 
well believe, not without meaning, that as the Twelve 
were separated from the multitude, so the Three were 
separated from the Twelve, to be with their Master 
"apart by themselves," on the mount and in the 
garden, in His glory and in His sufiering: " Simon % 
whom H^ surnamed the Rock, and James and John, 
whom He surnamed the Sons of Thunder.'' Of these, 
one, indeed, is presented to our view to be almost 
immediately withdrawn from it. Of James we know 
hardly any thing, save his sudden and early removal 
by the sword of Herod's executioner. But in his place, 
whether we ascribe it to chance or design in the pro- 
vidential laws of the world, there arose one, who, 
though not of the original Twelve, was "yet not be- 
hind the very chiefest of the Apostles" in labours, in 
miracles, or in the closest communion with his risen 
Lord. To James succeeded Paul, and from that time 
no less surely than the earliest disciples waited on the 
lips of the first Three as they descended from the holy 



» Mark iii. 16, 17. 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



3 



mount, may we fix our gaze on tlie Three of the later 
period — Peter, Paul, and John. 

It is, indeed, no passing fancy which rises before us 
in the image of that scene, which, even in its outward 
form, has been so indelibly impressed upon our minds 
by the well-known representation of transfiguration, so 
familiar to us in one of the highest works of Christian 
art. To that Divine teaching, which, as I have said 
before, is truly the essence of revelation, far removed 
above all earthly influences whatsoever — to that Divine 
Porm " whose face did shine as the sun, and whose 
raiment was exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller 
on earth can white them" — we may still, each one for 
ourselves, recur, without any human interposition, to 
know the one original object of our Christian faith. 
But in tracing its gradual descent into that world of 
sin and misery below, where the disciples are ever- 
more vainly striving to cast out the evil spirit which 
vexes and destroys the children of men — in investiga- 
ting its actual historical application to the existing cir- 
cumstances of the world, — it is something to remember 
that these Three, and these alone, exhaust all the influ- 
ences which were at work in the intermediate conflict 
of the apostolical age; that these Three, and these 
alone, intervene between us and Christ. 

If the various forms of evil, which throw their 
shadows over the Gospel history, are marked out by 
the mere fact of their contact with Jesus the Christ, for 
our especial warning, it is no less true that in those 
who were the especial instruments of His purposes we 
may see the various forms of goodness which God 
has marked out for our especial imitation. If even in 



4 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



common history a thousand men are truly said to die 
to make up one hero — if in every part of Scripture it 
is clear that the prominent characters represent to us 
vast classes of human thought which without them 
would have no expression — then most emphatically 
is this the case with the three great Fathers of the 
whole Christian world. If, in. short, it may be said, 
without irreverence, that the character and life of our 
Lord Himself determined once for all the whole cha- 
racter of Christianity for all future ages — then, al- 
though in a far lower degree, it may be said that the 
several forms and stages through which Christianity 
has passed, have been exemplified to us in the cha- 
racters of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. 

Each of the Three has his distinct place in the first 
formation of the early Church. Peter is the Pounder, 
Paul the Propagator, John the Finisher — Peter the 
Apostle of the rising dawn, Paul of the noon in its 
heat and in its clearness, John the sunset — first in the 
stormy sunset of the Apocalypse, then in the calm 
brightness of the Gospel and Epistles of his old age. 
Each is the centre round which the floating elements 
of thought and action — the scattered writings of the 
sacred canon — the wild distortions of them in the here- 
tical sects — clustered and crystallized. The whole 
world of Jewish Christians leaned upon St. Peter, as 
the whole world of Grentile converts leaned upon St. 
Paul, and the whole body of mixed believers turned, 
after the fall of Jerusalem, to the sole surviving Apo- 
stle at Ephesus. Each was connected with the sole 
authentic records of the life of Christ ; whatever may 
be the explanation in detail of the origin of the twin 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



5 



Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, there can be little 
doubt that it was St. Peter's disciples, who first received 
the representation which is preserved to us in the 
Prophet and Lawgiver according to St. Matthew, the 
human Friend according to St. Mark: whatever may 
be the account of the compilation of the Gospel and 
Acts of St. Luke, we need not hesitate to recognise in 
them St. Paul's view, first, of the SuJOfering Victim, then 
of the Invisible Guide of the universal Church ; what- 
ever may have been the immediate objects of the 
Gospel of St. John, we at once acknowledge that we 
there have the complete image of the Word made 
flesh, which the early Church naturally believed could 
have proceeded from none but the beloved disciple. 
Each has borne his part in the unfolding of the Divine 
economy. Peter, the Apostle of courageous and con- 
fident hope, Paul of faith, John of love; Peter, of power 
and action ; Paul, of thought and wisdom ; John, of 
feeling and of goodness ; Peter clings to the recollec- 
tions of the older world, that is passed or passing away: 
Paul plunges into the conflicts of the present: John, 
whether as prophet, evangelist, or teacher, fixes his 
gaze on the invisible and the future : Peter gave to 
Christianity its first outward historical form ; Paul its 
inward and spiritual freedom; John, that Divine end 
and object in which form and spirit harmonize. 

And what wonder is it, that — as in epochs far less 
momentous, in characters far less impressive, the germs 
of future destiny have been discovered, — so here sub- 
sequent ages have delighted to recognise in each that 
peculiar type and form of the Christian faith which 
was to them most congenial? What wonder that the 



6 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



whole of Christian Europe through those early struggles 
which can hardly fail to recall to our minds the times 
of the Jewish covenant, reposed with such unshaken 
confidence on the name of Peter ? that in the gradual 
rising of a freer spirit^ the gradual opening of a wider 
sphere, theologians and statesmen, nations and indi- 
viduals, were enkindled with new life by the words of 
Paul? that in these our latter days, all thoughtful 
minds, whether in search of evidence from Christian 
history, of comfort from Christian truth, of instruction 
from Christian holiness, are turning by a natural in- 
stinct to the writings of the last Apostle, who left the 
historical record in his Gospel of the things which he 
saw and heard, and taught us that God is Spirit, and 
that God is Love? 

What I have said is not inconsistent with the exist- 
ence of the other spheres of influence in the apostolical 
age, which will at once occur to many of us. Not to 
speak of modes of thought external but still congenial 
to the first beginning of the Christian society — not to 
lay stress on the long-cherished veneration for the 
teaching of John the Baptist — I will name two in- 
dividuals who might seem at first sight to hold almost 
divided sway with the three great Apostles, and who 
certainly are, next to them, the two chief centres of 
interest; I mean, James the Just, and Apollos. But 
though they require a distinct mention in any complete 
aTi;il3'sis of the apostolical age, it is obvious that their 
sphere was too limited and temporary, and their posi- 
tion too subordinate, to interfere with the general truth 
of the absolute and unrivalled supremacy of one or 
other of the three Apostles. Thus with regard to 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



7 



James ^ it is indeed impossible to mistake the tone of 
authority and the independent character which belongs 
to his Epistle, or the commanding position, which, 
according to Josephus and Hegesippus, no less than 
the Acts, he occupied amongst the Jews and Jewish 
Christians of Palestine. Still, though from this point 
of view he was regarded and may by us be regarded 
in the position in which he is on one occasion placed 
by St. Paul as the very chiefest pillar*^ of the early 
Church, yet from a higher and more general point of 
view, he is absorbed in the similar but wider sphere 
of Peter, the one great Apostle of the Circumcision. 
And though Apollos ^ was so " eloquent'' in Alexandrian 
wisdom, and " so mighty in the Jewish Scriptures'' 
that he was placed by the Corinthian factions on a level 
even with Paul and Cephas, and though modern criti- 
cism has found it difficult to refuse him at least a share 
in that great Epistle, of unknown origin % which forms 
so remarkable a link between the writings of Paul and 
John, yet the few hints which we possess of his life 
and character, amply justify the usual belief which for 
all practical purposes has merged his career in that of 
the Apostle of the Gentiles. 

Such is the general view which must always have 
been present more or less to every careful reader of the 
New Testament, but which has only been brought out 
in its full distinctness by the increased study and 
observation of later years. It is indeed the peculiar 
privilege of an age like ours, that in proportion as it 

•» See Sermon on the Epistle of St. James. « Gal. ii. 9. 

^ Acts xviii. 24 ; 1 Cor. i. 12 ; iii. 22. « See Sermon on the 

Epistle to the Hebrews. 



8 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



recedes from the events of the past by lapse of time, 
it is enabled in thought and imagination to reproduce 
them with a vividness which to previous ages was 
wholly unknown. If criticism destroys much, it creates 
more. If it cuts away some grounds from our faith, 
it re-constructs out of the chasm others incomparably 
more secure. If the sea of doubt has advanced along 
one part of our coast, it has proportion abh^ receded 
from another. If it has been maintained that " infi- 
delity is'' in some respects ^'in a more hopeful posi- 
tion'' towards Christianity than heretofore, its ancient 
strongholds have been absolutely destroyed. If Chris- 
tians of the fourth century still enjoyed something 
like a living recollection of the first, it would be easy 
to prove, that of facts so remarkable as the object and 
plan of the several Gospels, the chronology of the 
Epistles, the gift of tongues, and many similar points, 
even Eusebius and Chrysostom knew far less than we 
do ^. If Christians of the fourteenth century reposed 
with confidence on the genuineness of the so-called 
Apostolical Constitutions, and the elaborate forgery 
ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, it was still re- 
served for Christians of the nineteenth century to dis- 
cern in those remains of the apostolical age which 
increased inquiry has but doubly confirmed to us, 
whole scenes, characters, and institutions, which were 
to our forefathers as if they had never existed at all. 

IsTor let us shrink from making use of this, God's 
especial gift to us, from a fear lest by so doing we 
should think less reverently of those whom God has 

^ See Essay on The Traditionary Knowledge of the Apostoli- 
cal Age. 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



9 



chosen out to communicate His will to men. " I was 
afraid, and hid thy talent in the earth/' was the speech 
of the unfaithful servant. " Stand up, for I also am 
a man," was the speech of the first Apostle to one who 
would have worshipped him. Creation is not set aside, 
because Gfod has allowed us to discover the general 
laws by which the world was brought into existence ; 
still less is revelation resolved, as some would say, into 
" a merely human process," because we are able to 
trace the human or the natural agencies through which 
it has been conveyed. It has been remarked not less 
wisely than boldly, that of the five causes assigned by 
Gibbon for the rapid advance of Christianity, there is 
not one which need not be gladly admitted by the 
sincerest believer, if only he understands them rightly. 
And this remark is obviously of equal force if extended 
from the later propagation of the faith to its earlier 
formation. The Patriarchs were not less truly the 
friends of God, because in their outward lives we see 
a faithful likeness of the usages of an Arab chief. 
Moses did not less receive the law from God, because 
he was a man " mighty in words and deeds, and learned 
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians s." The Judges 
were not less truly raised up by God, because their 
name and functions were the counterpart of the magis- 
trates of their Phoenician neighbours. The Kings 
were not less truly the anointed of the Lord, because 
their office was actually suggested by the practice " of 
all the nations round about." The Prophets were not 
less certainly inspired by God, because the vision of 
Messiah's kingdom presented itself to them in the 
8 Acts vii. 22. 



10 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



earthly images of their age and country. And in like 
manner the Apostles of Christ were not less the heaven- 
sent Lawgivers of the Christian world for ever, because 
they spoke the language, and breathed the atmosphere, 
and represented the feelings of a time which is past 
away. "What God hath joined let no man put 
asunder.^' Let us contemplate them not merely as 
lifeless instruments, or empty shadows, but as " men 
of like passions with ourselves,^' and we shall not be 
the less, but the more able to enter into the higher 
truth, that while Paul planted and ApoUos watered, 
it was God that gave the increase ; that how different 
soever were their individual gifts, it was the self-same 
Spirit working in each of them severally as He would. 

It will be my endeavour then from • time to time 
to lay before you the most striking results at which 
those have arrived who have most studied the subject ; 
to describe in succession the historical position of each 
of the three Apostles, to inquire what were the natural 
faculties or feelings with which each was endowed, 
what the various lines of thinking and of acting which 
converged in each, what the peculiar work to which 
each was called in the Church of God. But before 
I descend into details it may be well to insist on some 
practical advantages which flow from a consideration 
of the subject not in its parts but as a whole. 

1. Viewing the Apostles in their purely human, 
historical, individual characters, it is on the lowest 
ground most valuable as a matter of Christian evidence. 
A distinct image of any one part of the rise of the 
Christian religion, however insignificant that part may 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



11 



be in itself, does much to confirm the strictly historical 
character of the whole narrative ; even though it be no 
more than the details of a shipwreck on the Mediter- 
ranean sea, it is something to feel certain that here 
at least is a plain matter of fact which cannot be dis- 
puted, here at least we have a firm footing where we 
may pause for a moment to overlook the surrounding 
country. Much more if this same impression can be 
extended to the lives of those who were, according to 
all accounts, the chief instruments in the work. Once 
let us fix in our minds, by whatever means, the fact 
that Peter, Paul, and John, exercised, as real an influ- 
ence over the Roman empire in the age of Nero and 
of Trajan, as Socrates over the age of Pericles, and 
Aristotle over the age of Alexander, and it will then 
be hard, even to the extreme of difficulty, to find a 
reason for abandoning our faith in Christ crucified and 
Christ risen. 

It is not, God be thanked, the whole evidence for 
the Divine origin of our Faith, it is at most but half 
of it. If, as it has been ^ well said, the two great 
proofs which contain all that we need, are "Christi- 
anity and Christendom, — the intrinsic excellence of 
the truth itself, and the wonderful effects which that 
truth has produced, — it is obvious that, whilst the 
second only of these is exemplified in the lives of the 
Apostles, the first and greatest is to be sought in no 
lower region than in the life and teaching of Christ 
Himself. If it be difficult by any mere human ex- 
planation to account for the characters of those by 
whom Christianity was first preached, it is still more 
^ Coleridge's Kemains. 



12 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



difficult to account by any ordinary circumstances for 
all that relates to Him whom they preached. But 
short of this, whatever evidence we can hope to have 
from the sudden change in the whole course of the 
civilized world, from the complete transformation of 
human characters, from the necessity of supposing an 
adequa.te cause, and an adequate object, for the display 
of energies almost if not altogether unparalleled — all 
this is brought before us in its most palpable form in. 
proportion as we can conceive to ourselves the his- 
torical existence of the Apostles. 

II. Again^ when we reflect how all of the Three, 
though absent from us in the body, are present in 
their Epistles, constantly read in our churches, con- 
stantly before us in our Bibles, we surely should un- 
derstand them better in proportion as we realized to 
ourselves not merely the sense of each particular pas- 
sage, but something of the central idea, something of 
the peculiar characteristics, something of the living 
image, of the Gfalilean fishermen, and the Pharisee of 
Tarsus, and the aged Apostle of Ephesus. We should 
feel the contrast between the colour which even their 
minds received from the influences of their age and 
countr}^ and the absolute elevation above them all of 
Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; 
between the distinctness of individual character in each 
of them, and the total absence of any merely human 
peculiarities in the life and character of Him, in whom 
dwelt all the fulness of the Grodhead bodily. We 
should, in proportion as we realized those spheres of 
thought of which each of them was a centre, learn to 
perceive what is universal and eternal in their writings. 



THE THEEE APOSTLES, 



13 



and what is local and temporary — to distinguisli the 
principles of Christian truth and duty which were then 
laid down once and for ever, from the particular modes 
of their application, which vary with, every age and 
country, the particular forms and institutions which 
for the most part never have been reproduced in any 
subsequent time, and probably never can be. 

III. Once more^ the compatibility of great varieties 
in forms, characters and views, with the closest unity 
of spirit, is a topic which has been of late times much 
insisted on, and which all history, no less than our 
own daily experience, concurs in teaching us. But 
there is nothing, whether in the revelations of God, 
or the wisdom of man, which brings this lesson home 
to us with such irresistible force, as the simple fact, 
thoroughly understood, that the most perfect of all 
truth was imparted to the world not in one uniform 
code, at one single moment of time, but by a gradual 
process lasting through more than half a century, and 
by the agency of men in natural character and dis- 
position the most opposite that it is possible for the 
human mind to conceive. It might have pleased the 
Most High to have illuminated the understandings 
of all His Apostles in an equal degree by one single 
lightning flash on the day of Pentecost. It might 
have been so ordered, that every other voice should 
have been hushed, and that one Gospel and one Epis- 
tle alone should have spoken to us from the general 
silence. — It is by thus conceiving what might have 
been, that we can best understand what has been. 
Not to dwell now on the successive stages in the pro- 
gress of each, which will best appear hereafter, let us 



14 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



bring once for all before our minds the contrast which 
divides one from the other. It is in their writings, of 
course, that this contrast is most vividly seen. In the 
case of St. Peter, indeed, the contrast is rather in ac- 
tion than in word — between his Epistles and those of 
St. Paul, there is, from distinct reasons which will best 
be explained in another connection, a greater likeness 
than could naturally have been anticipated between 
the two Apostles, who in their actual lives stood at 
the two opposite poles of the apostolical age, whom 
the conflicting factions of the time endeavoured to re- 
present as rival teachers, of whom " one withstood the 
other to the face because he was to be blamed." But 
if we bear in mind this complete antithesis between 
their practical spheres, — and if we further remember 
that it is the Epistle of St. James which expresses 
most strongly in writing the peculiar views of what 
may without offence be termed the school of St. Peter, 
— then it is not too much to say that never in any age 
of the world have there been employed in the same 
time and country, and for one common cause, styles 
of thought and language so radically distinct as those 
which appear in the works of these three Apostles : 
that in no comparison of cotemporary works, whether 
in ancient or in modern literature, is it so impossible 
to mistake the style of one author for that of another, 
as it would be to confound the severe and prophet- 
like warnings of St. James with the impassioned ap- 
peals and complicated arguments of St. Paul, or either 
of them with the simple aphorisms and intuitive per- 
ceptions of St. John. Whatever, in short, is the dif- 
ference between action and thought, between a mind 



I.] THE THEEE APOSTLES. 15 

building itself up on tlie past, and a mind embracing 
and communicating to others a flood of new and start- 
ling ideas, is the difference between St. Peter and 
St. James on the one hand, and St. Paul on the other ; 
whatever is the difference between those two great 
philosophers, who may emphatically be said to have 
divided between them the two great schools of human 
thought and speculation — such, if we may without ir- 
reyerence adopt an analogy long since suggested by 
one of our own theologians ^ ; such, in kind, and in its 
leading features, is the difference between St. Paul and 
St. John. 

Such is the fact in its general outline, and now 
what should be our inference from it ? I might point 
out, were this a congregation which needed to be told, 
or had not others already explained it in part from 
this place, how triumphant a testimony is borne to 
the divinity of Gospel truth by the distinct and in- 
dependent characters of ''the Gospel witnesses j.'' I 
might dwell on the impression which is left upon us 
not only of the truth and the Divine origin, but of 
the inexhaustible greatness of Christianity, when we 
see "the many mansions" of our Father's house thus 
opening in succession before us; when we reflect on 
the vast amount of wisdom and holiness which might 
be gathered, and which has been gathered from the 
representation of Christianity by each of the Three 
singly ; and yet beyond them all, the impression to be 
produced by the harmony and comparison of all the 
Three together. But perhaps the most practical and 

i Coleridge's Table Talk, p. 89, 95. 

j Newman's Sermons, vol. ii. Serm. xvii. The Gospel Witnesses. 



16 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



obvious result is that to whicli I alluded before — tbe 
solemn, I might almost say the awful, sanction, thus 
given, to the union of the most various tempers, 
thoughts and views, within the pale of our Christian 
sympathy. TVhen we look steadily at this fact, not 
accidentally connected with the Sacred Canon, but 
engrained into its very inmost substance — not one 
out of a hundred insignificant events of an ordinary 
age, but standing in the very foremost ground of the 
most critical epoch in the history of the human race — 
it seems impossible to explain away its importance, as 
though it belonged to a generation of men with whom 
we have no concern. However difficult it may be in 
many cases to jDass from the circumstances of the apo- 
stolical age to those of our own, in this case at least 
there is no such insurmountable difference between 
them, as need deprive us of the lesson which is read 
to us by this divergence of the Apostles from each 
other. We must remember that, if we look upon their 
diversities of style, and thought, and action, as trivial, 
their cotemporaries, as will appear more clearly after- 
wards, often looked upon them as matters of life and 
death — that if our difficulties are aggravated by the 
co-existence of all manner of schools and opinions, 
which in former ages existed separately, this was more 
especially the case in the first centur}^ than in any 
other age except our own — that if long familiarity 
has habituated us to the amalgamation of their se- 
veral writings and views, there was a time when the 
Churches of St. James knew nothing of the Churches 
of St. Paul — that nearh^ a whole generation passed 
away before either of them received the Gospel and 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



17 



Epistles of St. John — that the very highest truths con- 
cerning God and man are expressed by each of the 
Three in terms not merely dissimilar, but absolutely 
opposed, to the other. 

It will not be thought for a moment that these ap- 
parent diflPerences are real contradictions : nor again, 
that the mere co-existence of different views in itself 
constitutes real unity. It is certainly not enough to 
dwell on the divergence of the apostolical writings, un- 
less we dwell also on the still higher and essential har- 
mony to which this divergence leads — it is not enough 
to be tolerant of the various forms of goodness and 
truth, unless we strive to unite them in ourselves, as 
they are combined for our instruction in the volume 
of the New Testament — it is not enough that our sym- 
pathies should be wide, unless they be deep and strong 
— not enough to know the breadth and length of 
Christianity, unless we also know its height and 
depth ; whilst in one sense it is most true that dif- 
ferent ages, nations, and individuals may range them- 
selves under one or other of the three Apostles, there 
is yet a higher sense in which no less truly every age, 
nation, and individual must belong to all the three 
alike; — whilst in one sense Paul, and Apollos, and 
Cephas, and John are all distinct, in a higher sense 
they are all one, "for we are Christ's, and Christ is 
God's 

Still, whether we look at their differences or their 
unity, the practical lesson for us is the same. If 
there be any who are perplexed by the divisions of 
opinion which exist amongst us, it surely must be 
a consoling thought that no greater burden is laid 
^ 1 C. iii. 22, 23. 
C 



18 



THE THUEE APOSTLES. 



[sEEir. 



upon us than was laid upon the Apostles and their 
followers. If there be any to whom the many ^noble 
qualities which emerge on all sides out of the midst 
of these divisions inspire the longing and suggest the 
thought of a happier and a better union than we have 
known for many centuries, it is surely a hopeful re- 
flection that some such union was foreshadowed to us 
in the spring time of the Christian society. If there 
be a communion amongst us, which, whether by 4;he 
overruling providence of God, or the jarring passions 
of men, or the national character of our countrymen, 
has had the power of uniting within its pale more 
dissimilar elements than any other communion in the 
world — if its institutions and its forms of worship be 
such as of necessity to afford a refuge to those who 
shrink from rushing into either of the two extremes 
between which Christendom is at present divided — 
if it thereby holds out a means of Christian unity 
which we cannot lose without at the same time violat- 
ing its fundamental principles — then such a com- 
munion, whatever may be its general character, and 
however far unlike in this or other respects it may 
be to the Church of the fifth or of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, is at least in this respect not wholly unlike to 
the Church of the apostolical age^ 

IV. I have hitherto spoken of the Apostles as men 
— of those points which they have not in distinction 
from, but in common with, the men of other times 
and of ordinary circumstances. We must now turn 
to them as Apostles — to that more solemn and sacred 
character with which our natural feeling almost in- 

^ The above was suggested, by a passage in a contrary sense, in 
Dr. Newman's Essay on Development. 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



19 



stinctively invests them — and this the more lest the 
very vividness of the historical image which rises 
before us should tempt us to neglect the general 
effect of the whole scene, in overcharging the pic- 
ture of each individual figure. I have spoken of 
them, and shall have occasion again to speak of them, 
m the phraseology which we employ to describe the 
great men of common history, as swayed by the in- 
fluences, representing the feelings, and directing the 
revolutions of their age — and I have done so, and 
shall continue to do so, because I know no other 
language which can adequately express the transcen- 
dent interest, the heroic grandeur of all that belongs 
to that more than second birthday of the world's 
history. But if one word which I have uttered, or 
may utter, calls up an image of merely intellectual 
greatness, or throws into the shade for one moment the 
Divine power, without which the highest Apostle felt 
himself to be as nothing, I would once for all remind 
you that such an expression is not more certainly in- 
consistent with our common religious feeling, than 
it is with the whole idea of the Apostles' characters 
— that it is no mere transient impulse of devotion, 
but the strictest truth of fact, which calls upon us 
to join in that great thanksgiving which was, if I 
may so say, the natural expression of Him who saw 
from first to last the full consequences of the new 
element which in them was first and most fully ex- 
emplified : — " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things 
from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them 
unto babes It was not only that the religion 
°> Matt. xi. 25. 



20 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



whicli tlie Apostles preaclied was new, but tliat their 
very appearance was also new in itself — not only that 
they were "full welling fountain-heads of change" — 
but that when we have tracked these changes up to 
their source, we find ourselves on a level hitherto 
wholly unknown to us — on a mountain-ridge which not 
only overtops, but countersects, all those other ranges 
which determine the configuration of the moral sur- 
face of the world. It was not by intellectual power, 
like the philosophers of Greece, nor by arms and 
statesmanship, like the conquerors of Rome, nor by 
the influence of a sacerdotal order like the priestly 
castes of India or of Egypt, nor even by the patriotic 
zeal and unshaken endurance of their own Jewish an- 
cestors, that the supremacy of the Apostles was esta- 
blished. It was by the transforming energy of simple 
goodness, devoted, with a child - like faith, through 
a whole life to the service of God and man. Paul 
indeed^ in one sense, stands apart from the others ; 
but even in him the change effected by his conver- 
sion was so powerful, the intellectual was so com- 
pletely merged in the moral greatness of his cha- 
racter, that he is only an apparent exception. And 
of the other two, I will only say that one main cause 
of our difficulty in entering into their writings, lies 
in the difficulty of realizing to ourselves the style 
and language of men suddenly called from the lowest 
and most uneducated stations to speak on the loftiest 
subjects which can exercise the mind of man. They 
stand the first and greatest in that long - protracted 
warfare, in which the weak things of the world have 
confounded the things that were mighty — in which 
the palaces of Nero gave way before the unlettered 



I.] 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



21 



slaves who herded in the Roman catacombs — in which 
the kings and philosophers of Europe have been in- 
structed by the peasant from the plough, the work- 
shop, and the mine. 

And agaiu, great beyond expression as was the revo- 
lution in which the Apostles bore their part, and great 
as that part was, there is still a truth in the common 
feeling which teaches us to look upon them as instru- 
ments, rather than as actors, — as unconsciously im- 
pelled, rather than as consciously directing its course. 
They enkindle others because there is burning within 
themselves a fire which will not suffer them to rest : 
"we cannot but speak the things which we have 
seen and heard " necessity is laid upon me, yea 
woe is me if I preach not the Gospel^;" however 
high they rise, there is something higher still behind, 
to which their words, their miracles, their lives, point 
with a constant witness. If they were not something 
besides the heroes and great men of other ages, great 
men and heroes they were not ; exalt their human in- 
fluence to the utmost, and still — if there was not a 
mightier than any human agency at work, a greater 
than any human interest at stake — we have not 
solved the difficulty of their existence, their lives 
no less than their writings will become unmeaning 
and impotent. 

It is this which brings us to the great question, — 
What was the one common, the one peculiar element 
which raised Peter, Paul, and John, so high above 
all others — which raised the Twelve above the rest, 
and the Three above the Twelve — which made them 
" Acts iv. 20 ; 1 Cor. ix. 16. 



22 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



[sERM. 



in short not merely teachers, philosophers, philanthro- 
pists, missionaries, prophets — but Apostles? What 
was the faculty, or feeling, or fact, on which their 
gifts, their miracles, their writings, their inspiration, 
were based? — It was this, that they had seen, and 
known, and felt, not merely by the outward senses, 
but through the working of the Spirit of God in 
their inmost spirits, the life and death and rising 
again of Jesus Christ °. What the vision of the Lord 
of Hosts with the seraphim in the Temple had been 
to Isaiah, — what the vision of the whirlwind, and 
the chariot, and the cherubim, had been to Ezekiel 
on the banks of the river Chebar ; — that, the sight, 
the impression, the intercourse of our Lord had been 
to the Apostles. Deny this, and their whole history 
is one inexplicable riddle. Grant this, and almost 
every difficulty is fully accounted for. *^He shall 
receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you?,^' was 
our Lord's own description of the promised Com- 
forter. " To have been a witness of the resurrec- 
tion ^ " is the one test of Apostleship so often in- 
sisted upon by St. Peter. " Have I not seen the 
Lord Jesus ^?'' is the answer of St. Paul to those who 
would not have questioned his authority. "That 
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have 
looked upon, which our hands have handled, — that 
wliich we have seen and heard, declare we unto you 
is St. John's commendation to the readers of his Gos- 
pel and Epistle. That Divine Presence was felt to be 



° See Essay on the Apostolical Office, 
p John xvi. 14. i Acts ii. 22 ; iii. 15 ; v. 32 ; 1 Pet. v. 1. 

1 Cor. ix. 1. s 1 John i. 1. 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



23 



ever with, them ; that eye of love ever upon them ; 
that voice of wisdom ever sounding in their ears; 
the recollections of that Divine Teacher repelled, as 
by instinct, shade after shade of superstition and 
harshness and untruth; the communion with that 
Divine Friend drew their hearts heavenward, where 
He sate at the right hand of God : they, beyond 
all others, "reflecting {KaroTrTpL^o/LLevot) as in a glass 
the glory of their Lord, were changed into His like- 
ness from glory into glory 

V. And now we can enter at once on that in which 
their characters both as men and as Apostles converge, 
the eternal lesson of their example. " Be ye followers 
of me even as I am of Christ Jesus,'' are words which, 
if what I have said be true, should ever rise to our 
minds when the life of an Apostle is brought before 
us. So said not the older prophets ; they were signs, 
oracles, preachers, but not of necessity examples. It 
was the characteristic privilege of the Apostles that 
their lives, like that of their Divine Master, though 
in lower degree, cannot be known and felt without 
being imitated. Prophets, psalmists, evangelists, mi- 
racles, preachers, rulers, all these may pass away from 
the Christian Church, but Apostles never. The first 

* That this is the true rendering of the passage (2 Cor. iii. 18) 
seems certain from the context. "We Christians and Apostles, 
not as Moses with a veil on his face, but with unveiled faces 
{apaKiKa\viJ.iJ.4uc{> irpoa-caircf}) reflecting the glory of Christ, as Moses 
reflected the glory of the Lord, are changed into His likeness, and 
so are constantly commending ourselves to you not by concealment, 
but by openness ; not in proportion as our lives are less known, 
but in proportion as they are more known." The word itself is 
ambiguous. 



24 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



burst of early devotion, the first impression of the 
Word made flesh, are indeed gone. In that the Apo- 
stles must stand alone: in that no later age can claim 
the slightest share. But the spirit of their example — 
that new wonder which the world saw for the first time 
in their lives — and which alone is the imperisliable 
part of an Apostle's office — the devotion of their whole 
energies for the love of Christ, to the moral and spiri- 
tual good of man — this, the especial creation of Chris- 
tianity, has lasted with it; this Divine succession has 
endured — consecrated not by man, or through man, 
but by God Himself — not expiring, as some have 
fondly deemed, with the primitive Church, nor with 
the saints of the Middle Ages, nor with the Puritans 
of the seventeenth century — but to be revived in every 
place and in every time, and in every station of life, 
so long as we believe in the continuance of God's 
grace, and the freedom of man's will. 

Therefore it is no abrupt transition, if from a subject 
in itself so great and wide, our thoughts should turn 
to our own sphere of duties here, to jou, my younger 
hearers, for whose sake especially I am called to this 
place. Even were the atmosphere of your present lives 
ten times more uncongenial than it is to the exercise of 
the highest moral and religious gifts, still it cannot 
be useless for you to feel what they are in others : it 
cannot be indifierent whether you disregard or treasure 
up, whether you admire, or whether you treat with no 
concern, the examples of apostolical goodness, which 
you may have heard of, or have seen; whether amongst 
the dead or the living ; whether in the first or the 
nineteenth century. It is most important, whether 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



25 



in your lives here, or in looking forward to your 
future professions, that you should be made to feel 
that there have been, and are, and always will be, 
strains of a higher mood to be heard, flashes of a purer 
light to be seen, than the sights and sounds with 
which you are most familiar — that' there have been, 
and are, and always will be men, who think more of 
others than of themselves, more of who is above them, 
than of what is around them — whose lives are a con- 
stant witness that you are not placed in this world 
solely for your own enjoyment — that you have other 
interests to consult in your schemes, or opinions, or 
employments, than the interests and pleasures of your- 
selves or of your friends. It is most important that 
you should feel that no sight which you can possibly 
see is so ennobling, so precious^ as the sight of exalted 
goodness — that it is at your own peril if you stifle the 
serious thoughts which it may for the moment awake 
in you — or if you find an excuse in some difierence of 
time, or circumstance, or opinion, or even in error and 
extravagance, for turning aside from the eternal lesson 
which from the Apostles downwards always has been 
and will be taught by holiness and self-devotion, where- 
soever and in whomsoever it may be found. 

All this would be true, even if direct imitation were 
out of the question. But surely even here, even in 
the easy and unrufiled, in the too often frivolous and 
selfish tenor of an academical life, there is more room 
than many of us would suppose for the exercising some- 
thing of the love, for reaping something of the fruits 
of apostolical labours. With some of you there has 
been a time immediately before the commencement of 



26 



THE THEEE APOSTLES. 



[seem. 



your course here, when the peculiar responsibility and 
the peculiar means of usefulness which fell to your lot 
were so great, that a call to tread in the Apostles' foot- 
steps was not then strange to your ears — that St. Paul's 
complaint of " that which came upon him daily in the 
care of all the Churches," has actually been felt to be 
the legitimate expression of the sense of your own 
anxiety. Such direct means of combating evil, as 
I here speak of, or as you will all of you have in 
after life, this place certainly does not afford, and its 
most obvious duties are of another kind. Still it surely 
is not the inevitable doom of an institution like this, 
that all care or thought of others should be paralyzed 
as soon as you enter its walls ; even here, in the neces- 
sary impression which your characters make on those 
around you, there is room to be Apostles of Christ or 
of Satan. Here, as well as elsewhere, there are re- 
corded, instances, on the one hand, of the most precious 
gifts shipwrecked or perverted for the want of some 
such guiding hand, of some such thoughtful sympathy 
— instances, on the other hand, no less, of the effect 
which a single example of firmness and purity may 
have in the formation of characters, afterwards des- 
tined to become the support and blessing of thousands. 
Whether we look to the history of the Three Apostles, 
or to our own daily experience here, we know well that 
it matters not for this whether you have or have not 
intellectual gifts: it is not merely by conversing on 
serious subjects that you promote serious thoughts, nor 
by seeking directly to obtain influence that you really 
influence others — it is by being good that you do good: 
it is by kindness and thoughtfulness for others' feel- 



THE THREE APOSTLES. 



27 



ings, by sufferings or disappointments cheerfully en- 
dured, by advantages of intellect or fortune humbly 
borne, by adherence to fixed principles of duty, by the 
princely heart of guileless innocence, whose very look 
is the worst rebuke to vice — that here even more than 
elsewhere, a whole society may be made to feel that 
there is something better worth, living for than our own 
daily and hourly self-indulgence — something which, 
even amidst the turmoil or apathy of our own little 
world here, speaks of that world whither Christ is 
gone before us. For our own sakes no doubt, indeed, 
this is no less important than for the sake of others ; 
still the effect of our own conduct on others is often 
the surest way of reminding us of what it is on our- 
selves; and as the recollection of the Apostles' lives, 
if for no otber reason, is valuable to us as evidence to 
the fact that He once lived and died on earth — so it 
surely is no exaggeration to say, that the lives of 
Christians now are the greatest evidence for or against 
the fact that He now lives in heaven. "Because He 
lives, we shall live also If amidst the controversies, 
the thoughtless selfishness, the positive sins or tempta- 
tions of this place, our excitement is sobered, our care- 
lessness checked, our principles strengthened, by the 
thought of what He was and is — of what He has done 
and will do for us — then to others and to ourselves 
His name receives a witness from us, more humble, 
but not less real, than it once received from Peter, 
Paul, and John. 



i» John xiv. 19. 



THE TRADITIONARY KNOWLEDGE OF 
THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

It will be seen that ia the course of these Sermons I have 
assumed that our chief knowledge of the apostolical age is to 
be gained from the study not of any later ecclesiastical writers, 
but of the documents of the apostolical age itself ; and con- 
sequently, that in many instances a far greater knowledge 
is attainable on this subject by the investigations of later 
criticism than was possessed by the writers of the fourth and 
fifth centuries. 

It will be my endeavour in the following remarks to shew 
that this assumption is grounded in fact, and that whatever 
may be the use, in other respects, of studying the works of 
the four first centuries, no such advantage was conferred 
upon them in this respect by their proximity of time and 
place to the scenes and events of the first century, as in any 
degree to supersede the necessity of later inquiry. 

In the first place, it must be observed that the apostolic 
age, instead of being fertile in what we call traditions, was 
remarkably barren in them. In respect to the one great 
and central event of the first century, this is universally ac- 
knowledged. The TTew Testament, one may almost say the 
Gospel narrative, is "the sole record of our Lord's life and 
teaching Tradition has either no part in it at all, or what 
it has may be collected in half a page. Of all that vast 
collection of acts and words, which, "if they were written 
every one of them, I suppose the world would not contain 
the books which should be written," the whole result is 
contained in the short volume of the four Gospels. But 

* Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, 
pp. 347, 348. 



THE TEADITIONAEY KNOWLEDGE, &C. 



29 



what is true almost entirely of the chief subject of interest 
in the apostolical age, is true in a great measure of all that 
relates to it. Of the traditions of St. Peter, St. John, and 
St. James, I shall have to speak afterwards. But what do 
we really know of the rest of the Twelve ? Legendary 
accounts of later date we have indeed in abundance, but 
''there are scarcely two out of the whole number," it has 
been remarked, '' of whose deaths we have even so much as 
a statement of probable authority." The graves of Peter, 
Paul, John, and Thomas, are well known," says Chrysostom, 
(Hom. in Heb. xxvi.,) " of the rest, none." Isolated facts 
and sayings no doubt have been preserved : and of the later 
years of St. John's age we have something like a continuous 
narrative — but this is all ; there are occasional flashes of 
light, which make the darkness visible — but the scene as 
a whole is not the less wrapt in obscurity. If then of our 
Lord Himself tradition could tell nothing — if of the general 
history of His Apostles it could tell hardly any thing beyond 
what is recorded in the 'New Testament, it is superfluous to 
inquire further ; it is evident that the stream had been 
interrupted in its course — that either the first century had 
nothing more of importance to give, or that the succeeding 
centuries were incapable of receiving it. It is indeed suffi- 
ciently easy to conjecture the great purposes which may have 
been answered by this broad line of demarcation between 
the two periods. It needs no more than a glance at any 
paraphrases, ancient or modern, of the sacred text, to under- 
stand how much any representation of the Divine Idea gains 
by concentration and loses by dilution ; if we can enter into 
the Divine Providence which compressed even the authentic 
records of the origin of Christianity themselves within so 
small a compass, we shall be at no loss to comprehend how 
high an end might be served by destroying its doubtful and 
traditionary records altogether. But, in fact, it was but the 
almost necessary result of the circumstances of the case. 



30 



THE TEADITI01irAI!,Y KNOWLEDGE 



Once grant that the great event of the first century was 
what we believe it to have been — once grant its difference 
not only in degree but in kind, from all that followed, and we 
shall appreciate by the very force of the terms the depth of 
that chasm which must have been fixed between the two. Take 
even the ordinary instances of sudden transitions from one 
state of feeling and opinion to another — take that with which 
all scholars are so familiar, — the rapid change from the age 
of Plato to the age of Aristotle, — and we may have some 
conception, however faint, of the incapacity which Christians 
living amongst the ordinary influences of the age of Nerva 
and the Antonines must have had for entering into the feel- 
ings, or even recording rightly the facts, of an age which had 
witnessed the events and received the records of the Gospel 
history ; still more, when we add to this inward separation 
between the two eras, the complete loss of all outward 
knowledge of the times — the destruction of such a multitude 
of traditions, feelings and customs, as must have perished in 
the fall of Jerusalem and the extinction of the Jewish Church, 
And if even at its source tradition was so nearly dried up, 
what are we to expect from the writers of the fourth or fifth 
centuries, from whom most of our information on these 
points must necessarily be derived? The period between 
St. Chrysostom and St, Paul, which, through the long per- 
spective of ages, seems to us ao brief, was really no less than 
that between us and the Eeformation. It was a period too 
in which the variety and importance of the intervening 
scenes may well have interrupted the view of any writer, 
Christian or heathen — in which the Church of the age of 
Hfeio may well have disappeared under the numerous layers 
not only of events, but of whole states and stages of society 
which must have been heaped upon it in the successive 
epochs of Trajan, of Septimius Severus, of Aurelian, of Dio- 
cletian, and of Constantino. Whatever, after such a lapse 
of time, may be recovered, must depend entirely on the in- 



OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



31 



dividual industry or sagacity of the inquirer. Tacitus and 
the Emperor Claudius dwell on points of early Roman his- 
tory, which in the reign of Augustus were utterly unknown, 
and the reconstruction of the whole of that history by Mebuhr 
at the distance of twenty-five centuries, is far nearer the 
truth than the narrative which Livy composed at the dis- 
tance of seven. And we might fairly ask whether in the 
case of a purely natural and intellectual gift, Hke that of 
historical criticism, we have any reason for imagining that 
the heads of the Christian clergy — far as they were elevated 
above their cotemporaries in high moral tone and deep 
spiritual feeling — were exempt from the general degeneracy 
which overspread the whole Eoman literature in the age of 
Constantino and Theodosius, which could produce no greater 
poet than Claudian, no better historian than Ammianus, no 
profounder philosopher than Boethius 

In illustration of these remarks I shall now proceed to 
give a few well-known instances of points, on which, if 
on any, we might have hoped to have received information 
from these authors, and yet where their ignorance is so 
complete that our darkness seems light in comparison. The 
first two shall be from writers distinguished chiefly by 
proximity of time ; the next three, from Eusebius and 
Chrysostom, both because their claim to critical acumen is 
undoubtedly beyond that of their cotemporaries, and also 
because in the subsequent part of this volume there will be 
occasion to express our real obligations to them on these 
very subjects ; to Eusebius, for his preservation of the frag- 
ments of Hegesippus ; to Chrysostom, for the felicitous rhe- 
toric by which he has designated the work or character of 
each of the three Apostles. 

Tradition of our Lord's discourses in Papias. 
1. It is well known that most of the early traditions pre- 
served by Irenseas were contained in a lost work of Papias, 



32 



THE TEADITIOXART KNOWLEDGE 



Bishop of Hierapolis, who had seen and heard the Apostle 
John. This work amongst others contained the following 
statement of a discourse of our Lord on the times of His 
kingdom : " The days shall come, in which vines shall grow, 
" each vine with ten thousand boughs, each bough with 
" ten thousand branches, each branch with ten thousand 
" twigs, each twig with ten thousand bunches, each bunch 
" with ten thousand grapes, each grape containing twenty- 
" five measures of wine. And when any of the saints shall 

take a bunch, another shall cry out, ' I am a better bunch, 
" take me, through me bless the Lord.' In like manner 
" also a grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand ears, and 
" every ear ten thousand grains, and every grain five mea- 

sures of two parts of clear white meal, and the rest of fruits, 
" and seeds, and herbs, according to their several propor- 
"tions; and all animals using these kinds of food, which 
" are received from the earth, are to become peaceful and 
" harmonious, subject to man with all subjection. — 'These 
" things are possible to be believed by believers.' And 
"when Judas the traitor believed not, and asked, 'How 
" shall these predictions be brought to pass by the Lord?' 
" the Lord said, 'They shall see who come to them; for 
" these are the times of which Isaiah prophesied. The 
" wolf shall lie down with the lamb.'" — (Iren. adv. Hser. 
V. 33.) 

Now even if it were possible for a moment to conceive 
that Papias had in this passage truly preserved a fragment 
of our Lord's teaching, yet still the fact would remain, that 
it is a departure from the usual tenor of that teaching, so 
absolutely unparalleled, that probably no one since Irenaeus 
has ever ventured to quote it as genuine. But if instead of 
receiving this as a true tradition, we should all with one 
voice regard it almost as blasphemy to ascribe such words 
to Him who spake as never man spake — if we should all 
agree with the judgment of Eusebius in supposing that Papias 



OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



33 



was here transferring the imaginations of ''his ^ own little 
mind" to the Divine discourses which he was wholly in- 
competent to receive or report rightly — what becomes of 
the great storehouse of tradition which his work contained, 
except in every case to subject it to a comparison with the 
sole authentic documents, of which we can no longer consider 
him an independent interpreter ? 

Statement of our Lord's age in Irenceus. 

2. IrensBus, who was bishop of Lyons in the close of the 
second century, in his answer to the erroneous assertion of 
the Gnostics, (which however coincided with the belief of 
Clemens, Origen, and the later Fathers generally,) that our 
Lord's ministry began and ended in his thirtieth year, states 
as a positive fact, that His preaching chiefly took place 
between the fortieth and fiftieth year of His age. This 
statement he defends partly by inferences from John viii. 
56, 57, but chiefly by an appeal " to the testimony of the 
*' Gospel and all the elders who had met John in Asia, that 

John had handed down this statement to them, (for he 
'' had remained with them till the time of Trajan :) and some 
" of them had seen not only John, but others of the Apostles, 
*' and heard this same fact from them, and testify to the 

truth of an account of such as has been given." To 
*' whom then," he asks triumphantly, " is credit to be 
*' given ? to men like these, or to [the Gnostic] Ptolemy 
" who never saw the Apostles, nay, who never even in his 
'* dreams followed so much as an Apostle's footstep." — 
(Adv. Haer. ii. 22.) Kow it is just conceivable that Irenseus 
may be correct in stating that our Lord's public ministry 
lasted for nearly twenty years, and that in believing that 
it lasted for one or for three years, the whole Christian woild 
of earlier and later ages alike may have been mistaken. 

^ a<p6Spa <T/xiKphs &y rhv vovp 0aiviTai. — Eus. H. E. iii. 39. 
D 



34 



THE TEADITIONAET KN^OWLEDGE 



But if we may be allowed to acquiesce in the commoii 
belief, sanctioned as it is alike by general consent and sound 
criticism, then the statement of Irenaeus is a crucial instance 
of the worthlessness of all such traditional proofs. It has 
been sometimes stated that this is " improperly " called a tra- 
dition," that it ''makes out no claim to be considered aposto- 
lical." But so far from this being the case it would be 
difficult to find any appeal to apostolical tradition of equal 
positiveness and circumstantiality of statement. However 
likely it may have been to have sprung in the first instance 
from a misapprehension of what the elders may have inferred 
from John viii. 57, this is nowhere stated in the passage 
itself, and that text is referred to only as a proof subordinate 
to the apostolical tradition which Irenaeus deemed a sufficient 
guarantee of the opinion which the whole world now regards 
as an exploded falsehood. "When, therefore, on a point of 
such importance to the whole outward aspect of the Chris- 
tian history, involving a complete revolution in the chrono- 
logy both of the Gospels and Acts — introducing a period of 
nearly twenty years in our Lord's life, wholly unaccounted 
for and unnoticed in the sacred narrative — when on a point 
like this, we find that either the immediate hearers of the 
Apostles so utterly misconceived the Apostles' teaching, or 
were themselves so utterly misunderstood by Irenaeus, we 
may well ask what outward fact is there in the history of 
the first century, on which it would not be safer to take the 
assertion of one " who had not even in his dreams followed 
so much as an Apostle's footstep," if only it agreed with the 
undoubted tenor of the Apostles' teaching, rather than the 
assertion of those who professed to ''have heard it from the 
Apostles themselves," if only it was in contradiction to aU 
that the iN'ew Testament teaches us of the Apostles and their 
Lord? 

" Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, 
p. 206. 



OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



35 



Criticism of the Gospels ly Euselius. 

3. One of the most remarkable facts on the very surface 
of the New Testament, is the difference between the fourth 
and the three earlier Gospels, which accordingly had at- 
tracted the attention of the cotemporaries of Eusebius. 
The solution which he gives is as follows: "The other 

three Evangelists wrote the history only of the events 

after the imprisonment of the Baptist, as appears from 
"the commencement of their narrative; (viz. Matt, iv., 
"Mark i., Luke iv. ;) the Apostle John, therefore, is said 
" to have committed to his Gospel the period passed over in 
" silence by the other Evangelists, namely, the events be- 
" fore the imprisonment, as appears also from his own 
"statement (John ii. 4). Therefore," he concludes, "to 
" those who understand this, there will no longer appear 
" any difference between the Gospels, inasmuch as the Gos- 
" pel of St. John contains the earlier part of our Lord's 
" actions, and the other three the account of the end of 
" His life."— H. E. iii. 24. 

Now at the very outset it is incredible that any one who 
had a real insight into what it was that he was professing 
to explain, — a difference not merely of outward facts, but 
of tone, spirit, object, of every thing in short which can dis- 
tinguish one biography from another — should have thought 
that he could do so by a theory of mere chronological trans- 
position. The very attempt destroys his authority before 
we examine it. And now confining it merely to that 
narrow limit of the outward narrative, what is the solu- 
tion which he offers? That the events peculiar to the 
Gospel of St. John, took place before the imprisonment of 
John the Baptist; in other words, that almost the only 
events in the Gospel history which the context compels 
us to connect with the very latest period of our Lord's 
ministry, such as the visit to the Eeast of Tabernacles, 



36 



THE TEABITIONAEY KNOWLEDGE 



and the raising of Lazarus, must be supposed to have oc- 
curred in its very earliest period. Grant this," he says, 
"and then St. Matthew and St. John will perfectly agree." 
Compare this explanation, I will not say with the masterly 
discussions of the suhject, and arrangement, of St. John's 
Gospel in recent commentators, but with the answer which 
would be given by the humblest theological student of the 
nineteenth century, and would it be possible to doubt \\ hich 
had the best understanding of the method according to which 
the Gospel narrative was composed ? 

Statement of the Gift of Tongues in Chrysostom. 

4. "Eo one can read the Acts or Epistles without observ- 
ing how characteristic and prominent a feature of the apo- 
stolical age is represented to us in the Gift of Tongues ^, and 
accordingly in modern times many able discussions have been 
written upon it, from which, in spite of the great obscurity 
with which it is encompassed, yet a tolerably lively image 
may be formed of its true nature and ends. Yet of this 
whole subject, so interesting in itself, so capable of receiv- 
ing illustration from those who lived near the time, and 
who might be expected to have heard something of it from 
those who had actually witnessed it, our sole information 
from so illustrious a commentator as Chrysostom is summed 
up in the candid confession which he has left us in his 
Homilies on the twelfth chapter of the first Epistle to the 
Corinthians^. ''This whole place is very obscure, but the 
" obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts re- 
" ferred to, being such as then used to occur, but now no 

longer take place." 

•* See Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians. 

« In the subsequent parts of his comment he does indeed say that 
" after baptism one spake in the Indian, one in the Persian, another 
in the Eoman tongue." But these are evidently mere conjectures of 
his own. 



OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



37 



Chronology of St. PauVs Epistles in Chrysostom, 

5. In order to form an exact historical conception of the 
apostolical age, no point is more necessary to determine than 
the order of St. Paul's Epistles: the tissue of events, the 
understanding of the Epistles themselves, greatly depends 
upon it. Accordingly in Chrysostom's Preface to his Homi- 
lies upon them, is a brief chronological arrangement of 
them^, drawn out with tolerable correctness, and. not with- 
out striking remarks on the importance of rightly under- 
standing it. But it is impossible not to see that his know- 
ledge on the subject is entirely confined to the inferences 
afforded by the Epistles themselves: the greater part of 
his cotemporaries, he says, either knew nothing about it, 
or else maintained a chronology directly at variance with 
the evidence of the Apostle's own words: and his conclu- 
sions accordingly are stated with a hesitation, a meagre- 
DOPS, a consciousness of uncertainty, which by the side of 
the searching and sifting criticism of German scholars, or 
even the plain common-sense deductions of our own Paley, 
seem like scepticism itself. 

The interpretation of the Psalms in Chrysostom. 

6. One more quotation shall be added from Chrysostom, 
because, though not immediately connected with this sub- 
ject, it yet is kindred to it, and affords a remarkable in- 
stance of the discrimination needed by those .who take the 

^ That the traditionary knowledge of the chronology of the Pauline 
Epistles had expired even before the beginning of the third century, 
appears from the Fragment on the Canon preserved by Muratori, 
(Eouth, Kell. iv. 1,) where the order of arrangement, which pro- 
fesses to follow that of time, is as follows : 1. 1 and 2 Cor. ; 2. Eph. ; 
3. Phil. ; 4. Col. ; 5. Gal. ; 6. 1 and 2 Thess. ; 7. Rom. It is needless 
to point out the manifold errors. 



38 



THE TEADITIONAET KN-QWIEDGE 



Fathers for their guides in exegetical questions. In com- 
menting on the description of Christian love in 1 Cor. xiii. 
8, the difficulty occurs to him, which has occurred to many 
since, "Why then saith David, 'Do not I hate them, 0 
Lord, that hate Thee ; I hate them with a perfect hatred?' " 

To this question he returns two answers. The first is as 
follows: "jS'ow in the first place not all things spoken in 
" the Psalms by David, are spoken in the person of David. 
"Por it is he himself who saith, 'I have dwelt in the tents 
" of Kedar,' and 'Ey the waters of Babylon there we sat 
" down and wept,' and yet he neither saw Eabylon nor the 

tents of Kedar." That is to say, the apparent contrast 
between the expressions of the Apostle and the Psalmist 
is explained by the fact that though David wrote all the 
Psalms, he yet, as in the case of the 137th, did not always 
speak in his own person. On which it may be observed, 
1st. "What should we say at the present time to any one 
who was to excuse what appear to be difficulties in the 
Psalms on the ground that the Psalmist put them into 
the mouth of another person, implying of course that their 
use "for doctrine, for reproof, for coiTection, for instruc- 
" tion in righteousness," depends entirely on their having 
been spoken in the person of David, and that if we can 
make them out to be spoken in the person of another, they 
may be (as in the case of the speeches of Job's friends) the 
dictates not of God but of Satan. There may have been 
interpretations in modern literature equally uncritical, or 
equally rationalistic, but we may faiiiy doubt whether the 
whole recent theology of England and Germany united could 
furnish a passage which equally combined the two. 2ndly. 
Is there any educated person, now living in England, who 
if asked deliberately (for of course I do not now speak of 
oversights or popular parlance) whether the words "By the 
waters of Babylon we sat down and wept" were writ- 
ten in the reign of David, would not treat that as a wild 



OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



39 



absurdity, which the Archbishop of Constantinople in the 
fourth century assumed as an undoubted truth? And if 
so, does not this imply such a radical difference between 
the whole mode of viewing the composition of the sacred 
volume in the respective periods, as to render it worse than 
useless for the readers of the latter age to be guided in their 
studies exclusively by the writers of the former ? 

Par different is the ground assumed in the second answer, 
which meets the difficulty by insisting on the gradual pro- 
gress of God's revelations, on the imperfect standard allowed 
and even approved under the old dispensation, as contrasted 
with the perfect law of love in the new. 

*'Eut besides this we now require a completer self-com- 
mand. Wherefore also when the disciples besought that 
" fire might come down even as in the case of Elias, * Ye 
" know not,' saith Christ, 'what manner of spirit ye are 
" of.' Por at that time not the ungodliness only, but 
" also the ungodly themselves they were commanded to 
hate, in order that their friendship might not prove an 
occasion of transgression to them. Therefore He severed 
their connexions both by blood, and on every side He 
fenced them off. But now because He hath brought us 
*' to a more entire self-command, and set us on high above 
that mischief, He bids us rather admit and soothe them." 
It is not meant that this exhausts the subject; or that 
the harmony of the Scriptures might not be still further 
vindicated by the distinction which later theologians have 
often drawn between the letter and the spirit — between 
the different forms which the same truth assumes in dif- 
ferent stages of God's dispensations. But for the present 
purpose it is sufficient to call attention to the union of dis- 
cordant qualities which is implied in this abrupt transition 
from a statement which sets all rules alike of criticism and 
of reverence at defiance, to a statement which, whilst it is 
in full accordance with the highest requirements of later 



40 



THE TEADITIONAEY ZlfOWLEDGE 



investigation, is at the same time an almost necessary in- 
ference from the contrast implied throughout the New Testa- 
ment between the Law and the Gospel, especially from our 
Lord's own words : " Ye have heard that it hath been 
said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 
But I say unto you, Love your enemies." (Matt. v. 43, 44.) 
"Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you 
to put away your wives ; but from the beginning it was 
not so." (Matt. xix. 8.) 

These instances of the small value of the traditionary 
knowledge of the apostolical age, and of the inability of 
even the most eminent writers of the fourth and fifth cen- 
turies to reconstruct the history of it from such sources, are, 
of course, perfectly familiar to students of patristic theology, 
and are, as is also vs^ell known, merely samples of a large 
class of passages which it would be alike invidious and 
tedious to detail at length. The hypothesis? maintained 
by Tertullian and Cyprian, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory, 
Jerome, and Chrysostom, that the dispute between the two 
Apostles at Antioch was a mere preconcerted collusion — the 
confident^ belief expressed "always, every where, and by 
all," in the existence of the Phoenix, not as an argumentum 
ad hominem, but as an undoubted fact — the incapacity to 
discern or to grapple with the obscurities in the Apostolical 
Epistles, as when Chrysostom^ passes over, almost without 
notice, the celebrated texts in 1 Cor. xi. 10; Gal. iii. 20; 
where the hundreds of interpreters in modern times have at 
least recognized the difficulty of the passages, even if they 
have made but little advance towards discovering the mean- 
ing — the substitution of allegorical figures for real explana- 
tions of perplexities, whether in the Old or the New Tes- 

s See the references given in the notes to the Oxford edition of 
Chrysostom's Homilies on the Epistle to the Galatians, (Gal. ii. 12). 
^ The only doubts are those expressed by Origen and Photius. 
' See Chrys. ad loc. 



OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



41 



tament, as when Augustine meets the question which natu- 
rally occurs on the perusal of the narrative of Jacob and 
Esauj, by answering that Jacob is the Church and Esau the 
synagogue — these, and countless similar instances might be 
given, each of them capable of a detailed exposition like the 
preceding, as convincing proofs that whatever excellences 
the writers of the first ages of the Church possessed in other 
departments, we cannot as a general rule look to them for 
critical tact in receiving, or critical skill in reproducing, the 
events of a previous period. 'No doubt in some this critical 
acumen existed to far a greater extent than in others : but 
even in them there were counter influences at work which 
prevented it from having its full scope. When Origen, for 
example, turned his attention deliberately to questions of 
this nature, the gain to sacred criticism is immediate and 
undisputed : we thankfully acknowledge his recovery of the 
true ^ reading of geographical names in Palestine, from his 
investigation of local traditions — his concise but comprehen- 
sive summary! of the controversy on the authorship of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews — his explanation of the darkness at 
the Crucifixion ^, as singular then as it is almost universally 
accepted now. But the tendencies of his age and school — it 
may be of his own individual character — led him for the 
most part to an opposite field of inquiry : it is not with the 
letter of actual facts, such as we have been now considering, 
but with the spirit of allegorical and mystical meanings that 
his name is always associated, and accordingly for one pas- 
sage which we see quoted from his works as elucidating his- 
torical difficulties, we meet with ten in which the historical 
fact is, if not denied or explained away, at least altogether 
lost sight of, in the profounder spiritual lesson which it was 
supposed to be intended to convey. 



j See Aug. ad loc. 

1 Apud Eus. H. E. vi. 25. 



^ Comm. on John i. 28. 
Comm. on Matt. xxvi. 45, 



42 



THE TEADITIONAET KNOWLEDGE, &C. 



To point out whence these counter influences came, or to 
point out the true services of ''the Fathers" to their own or 
to after ages, is beyond the scope of the present discussion. 
It is only on the particular point of these claims as critical 
historians that I have spoken or wish to speak. It is diffi- 
cult to conceive the circumstances which would justify an 
indiscriminate depreciation of the eminent men of any age, 
least of all of an age to which we owe so much, and in 
which there is so much to love and admire, as the period of 
the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian Church. But 
it is necessary from time to time to shew, that because they 
did much, there is no reason to expect that they should have 
done all — that there is nothing more extraordinary in their 
being deficient in historical criticism than in their being 
ignorant of the invention of printing; and that their call 
was so wholly diff'erent from that of modern theologians, 
that to charge the students of recent commentators with the 
presumption of preferring them to Augustine or Ambrose, is 
almost as irrelevant as if an admirer of Shakspeare were 
to be charged on that account with a contempt of Bacon. 
Where two spheres are wholly incommensurable, all com- 
parisons to the detriment of either are happily innocuous or 
impossible. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE, 



AND ITS EELATION TO THE OTHER INSTITUTIONS 
OE THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

The general description of the essential characteristics of 
an Apostle which has been given in the Sermon, (p. 21, 22,) 
will not be disputed. The common notion of an Apostle 
which must naturally occur to every one's mind, is of one 
eminently endowed with moral and spiritual gifts. The only 
sense in which the word is still naturally used amongst us^ 
is of one devoting his energies to some great moral or reli- 
gious cause, as when we speak of Boniface the Apostle of 
Germany, or Xavier the Apostle of the Indies, or Howard 
the Apostle of prisons. 

Still as there are various notions associated with the name 
of Apostle, which more or less interfere with the clearness 
of this impression, and as it is of no slight importance to our 
own conception of the essentially moral and spiritual cha- 
racter of Christianity itself, that the conception which we 
form of those who appear as its chief propagators should 
correspond to this character, it may be worth while to de- 
fine more precisely our idea of what we call the Apostolical 
office. 

I. The Office of the Apostles. 

The name is probably derived from the words and actions 
of our Lord Himself, (John xvii. 18; xx. 21 ; Matt. x. 5,) 
as expressive of the peculiar characteristic of the Apostles, 
which I have endeavoured to describe in the Sermon, viz., 
that they were men, not speaking in their own name, but in 
that of Another ; not doing their own work, but the work of 
Him who had sent them forth. Compare Rom. x. 15. It is 



44 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



one of the many cases which we find in the New Testament, 
of an idea and of a word both new — each illuminating and 
illuminated by the other. The "Prophet" spoke the mes- 
sage which was delivered to him, or painted the vision 
which rose before him ; but it was the peculiarity of the 
inspiration of an ''Apostle" that inasmuch as it was not 
temporary but perpetual, on the one hand not only parti- 
cular moments of his life, but his whole being was im- 
pressed by that one impulse which had driven him forth — 
whilst, on the other hand, his particular utterances, far more 
than in the case of the prophet, appear to depend on the 
working of his own individual mind, and to be occasioned 
by the peculiar circumstances of his own life. One only of 
all the characters in the Old Testament approaches to this 
distinguishing mark of the l^ew, in the complete self-devo- 
tion of his whole life to his original call, — Moses, the man 
of God — and it is remarkable, that as in Heb. iv. 1, it is in 
reference to Aaron that our Lord receives the title of Chief 
Priest {dpxi-epevs), so it is in evident reference to Moses that 
He receives the title of Apostle, {dnoa-ToXos.) And it is for 
this reason that, whilst the prophet or the ruler may be re- 
garded without reference to any thing but his words or his 
outward deeds, the Apostle's authority necessarily rests on 
the witness of his life and character^. 

It is obvious from this, that whilst in the very highest 
sense of all, the word could only be applied to Him whose 
whole life was the reflex of Him that sent Him, and whose 
words were the reflex of His life, — so in the highest sense 
in which it could be applied to any mere man, it was ap- 
plied to the Twelve, and to them alone, with the addition of 
the Apostle Paul. [The only exceptions to this are to be 
accounted for either by the attraction of the context, (as 
in its application to Barnabas, Acts xiv. 4, 14; Apollos, 



» See 2 Cor. iii. 1 ; v. 12 ; xi. 18—30 ; xii. 12 ; xiii. 3. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



45 



1 Cor. iv. 9, 6,) or by its being used in its simple etymolo- 
gical sense of messenger," (Phil. ii. 25 ; iv. 18 ; 2 Cor. viii. 
19, 23.)] The characteristic points, therefore, of an Apo- 
stle's office were two. 

1. The appointment by Christ Himself. I have said that 
we can best understand the position of the Apostles by the 
analogous position of what we call great men. Great men, 
as we all know, are created by no human agency, but by 
God Himself. They are what they are often called, " God's 
nobility." Such, by analogy, although only by analogy, 
were the Apostles. Amidst almost every other conceivable 
difference, Apostles, and those to whom we give the name 
of great men, were alike in this, that neither could be 
made or ordained by man. And this idea is strictly pre- 
served in the New Testament. No human consecration in- 
tervened between Christ and His Apostles. His choice, His 
teaching. His mission not only superseded but excluded 
all besides''. Nowhere does this appear more strongly 
than in the case of the two who were created after His 
withdrawal from them ; when, if ever, outward forms or 
human agency would have been employed for the pur- 
pose. St. Matthias was not appointed by imposition of 
hands, but by lot. He was found to have the only signs 
by which men could judge of his fitness for the post, 

It is a striking illustration of this fact, that in the most solemn 
inauguration of the Apostles to their of&ce, (John xx. 22,) the sym- 
bolic act which accompanied it was not the usual form of imposition 
of hands by which the officers of the Jewish synagogue and of the 
early Christian Churches were appointed to their outward work, but 
that remarkable sign which is mentioned here alone — "He breathed 
upon them, and said, Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost." As if the sense 
were, " Earthly offices have been and may be given away by outward 
ceremonial acts, but you must enter on your work with no other re- 
commendation or authority than the inspiration of My Spirit." — 
Comp. Isa. xi. 4 ; 2 Cor. iii. 1. (See Herder, von Geist des Christen- 
thums, c. 4.) 



46 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



namely, intercourse with our Lord, and being a witness of 
the resurrection : whether he had an inward character cor- 
responding thereto could be known only to the Searcher of 
Hearts — and as soon as the prayer was over, and the lot 
fell upon Matthias, he was at once ''numbered with the 
eleven Apostles." (Acts i. 23- — 26.) 

St. Paul's case is, if possible, stiU more striking. His 
own words are decisive. " Paul, an Apostle not from man, 
neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father 
who raised Him from the dead." (Gal. i, 1.) And to the 
same effect is 1 Cor. ix. 1—4. Two circumstances only in 
his life most seem to imply the intervention of some human 
form of appointment. — (a). The imposition of the hands of 
Ananias in Acts ix. 17, three days after his conversion. But 
if we compare this fact not only with the two passages just 
quoted, but with his own account of the whole event in the 
two speeches in the latter part of the Acts, (6 eeos . . . Trpoe- 
Xeipla-aro, Acts xxii. 14 ; and still more axpOrjv o-oi . . . irpo- 
Xeiplo-aaOai <r€, Acts xxvi. 16,) it is clear that the visit of 
Ananias was regarded as wholly subordinate to the appear- 
ance and words of Christ on the road to Damascus, so much 
so that in the second of the two speeches (Acts xxvi.) it is 
omitted altogether. The crisis of his life, so to say, was 
already passed when Ananias arrived ; and the imposition of 
hands, followed by the gifts of the Spirit, (probably the 
speaking with tongues, as in x. 46 ; xix. 6,) the cure of his 
blindness, and his baptism, evidently relate not to his Apo- 
stleship, but, as in the other passages where the same con- 
junction of facts occurs, (Acts ii. 38; viii. 12, 17; x. 46; 
xix. 6,) to his reception into the Christian society. And 
even if it could be supposed for a moment that these gifts 
could have constituted him to be an Apostle, it is important 
to observe that Ananias, through whose instrumentality they 
were conferred, not only was not an Apostle, but, as far as 
appears, was nothing more than an ordinary disciple, (fia- 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



47 



6t]ti)s, ix. 10). — (jS). The imposition of tlie hands of the pro- 
phets of Antioch before his first journey, Acts xiii, 1 — 3i 
" Now there were in the Church that was at Antioch cer- 
tain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that 
"was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, 
" which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and 
" Saul. As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the 
" Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the 
" work whereunto I have called them. And when they 
" had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, 
" they sent them away." What has been already said of 
the coincidence of the call to his Apostleship with his con° 
version, applies still more strongly against connecting it 
with an event at least four years subsequent. But it is 
sufficiently clear from the transaction itself. This impo- 
sition of* hands was evidently no inauguration of Paul to 
an office which he had not before received, but a solemn 
dedication of him with prayer to that particular part of it 
on which he was now for the first time called by the Spirit 
of God to enter, viz., the journey through the provinces of 
Asia Minor. The prophets who acted on this occasion 
were not the superiors, but the inferiors both of Paul and 
Barnabas ; there is no proof, but rather the reverse, that 
they held any distinct office in the Church of Antioch ; 
Paul himself, who is enumerated amongst them in xiii. 1, 
had none such : the gifts of prophecy were enjoyed (1 Cor„ 
xi. 5 ; Acts xxi. 9) both by men and women; Hooker (Eccles. 
Pol. V. 78, 6,) has truly observed that ''we nowhere find 
"prophets to have been made by ordination;" and where 
these same persons seem to be mentioned again in Acts xv. 
40, they are spoken of simply as the brethren" {vno rcov a8eX- 
(j)a)v). The act itself also which they performed, is described 
in Acts xiv. 26, as a " commendation of Paul to the grace of 
God," a phrase which obviously implies not any communica- 
tion of a new office or character, but an invocation of God's 



48 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFPICE.. 



blessing and protection on his arduous task, which did not 
take place once for all, but which might be, and apparently 
was, repeated many times over, whenever the Apostle en- 
tered on any new field of labour 

2. The second characteristic of the Apostles lies in the 
fact that their work consisted not in the performance of any 
formal or outward acts however solemn, but in the impres- 
sion produced by a whole life, character, and teaching. This 
in fact is the almost necessary consequence of what has just 
"been said respecting their appointment. As their mission 
was derived from no lower source than God Himself, through 
the calling of His Son, so their authority rested on no lower 
ground than the personal qualities with which God Himself 
had endowed them through the gift of His Spirit. They 
were, if one may so say, the natural aristocracy of the 
Church, as great men arc the natural aristocra(?y of the 
world. Their power was moral, not magisterial; their in- 
fluence spiritual, not official. The very words, " apostolical 
office," are, when we come to analyse them, a later union of 
two discordant ideas. Offices no doubt they undertook in 
abundance, but it was only for particular emergencies of 
time and place, only to shake them oflp again, theii' own 
essential office, if we still will have the word, remaining 
unimpaired without them, as if it had never been identified 
with them. So it was in the well-known instance of the 
serving of tables and the ministration of the poor, which was 
first undertaken by the Twelve, then dropped, then resumed 
by Paul, when in addition to his labours as sole Apostle of 
the Gentile Churches, he also undertook the difficult and de- 
licate task of providing for the needs of the Chiistians in 

<= Observe the repetition of the same expression Acts xv. 40, xiv. 26, 
when St. Paul departed on his second journey from the same place. 
*' There was scarce any public design or grand employment, but the 
" Apostolic men had a new ordination to it, a new imposition of 
*• hands." (Bishop Taylor's Episcopacy Asserted, Works, vii. p. 43.) 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



49 



Judaea. (Acts vi. 1, 2; 1 Cor. xvi. 1; 2 Cor. viii. 9; Gal. 
ii. 10.) So, to take again the case of the Apostle whose life is 
best known to us, at one time the government of all the 
Greek and Asiatic Churches devolved on him alone, (2 Cor. 

xi. 28,) then it is thrown provisionally into the hands of his 
companions, as of Timothy and Titus, (1 Tim. i. 3 ; Tit. i. 5,) 
once more however to be resumed by himself, whenever he 
should return in person to his charge, (1 Tim. iii. 14 ; iv. 13.) 
And so of the various names which in the apostolical age or 
subsequently were taken to denote various orders or func- 
tions in the Christian society, there is not one. Bishop*^, 
Presbyter, Deacon, Pastor, Prophet, which may not be found 
in various stages of their lives applied to one or other of the 
Apostles ; not of course in their stricter and more technical 
meaning, but still sufficiently shewing how far above all the 
outward institutions which have gathered at its feet the true 
idea of the Apostolical character rises in its greatness, em- 
bracing all, circumscribed by none of them — transmitted to 
later times, so far as it can be transmitted at all, not by any 
continuance, real or supposed, of apostolical usages or forms, 
but by the perpetuation and imitation of apostolical goodness 
and apostolical wisdom. 

The Spiritual Gifts of the Apostolical Church. 

II. Here then the proposed sketch of the characteristics 
of the Apostles might stop. — But two or three points have 
necessarily been stirred in it, which may require solution, 
and which will also serve to illustrate what I have said. 
The Apostles, although the chief instruments in building 

^ iirlcrKoiros, in Acts i. 20, applied to Judas : irpeafivTepos, in 1 Pet. 
v. 1, to Peter : in 2 John 1, 3 John 1, to John: ^LaKona, SiaKovelu, Acts 
i. 25, to Judas and Matthias: Acts vi. 2, to all the Apostles : 1 Cor. 

xii. 25, to Paul : iroiixrjv, John xxi. 16, to Peter : irpo^^TTjs, Acts xiii. 1, 
to Paul. 

E 



50 



THE APOSTOLICAL OmCE. 



up the early Church, were not the only instruments; and 
in order to understand their ministrations aright, it may be 
necessary to describe those inferior ministrations of different 
kinds, which, although in part resembling them, must not be 
confounded with them. 

Pirst then, we find various gifts and functions described 
as bound up, like the gifts and functions of the Apostles, 
though less frequently and prominently, with the very es- 
sence of religious life in the Christian society, as the most 
visible sign of Cod's Spirit amongst Christians. — See Eom. 
xii. 5 — 8 ; Eph. ii. 20 ; but especially 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Eph. iv. 
7 — 12. On these two last passages Hooker (Eccl. Pol., v. 78. 
8, 9,) observes as follows. — "I beseech them therefore 
which have hitherto troubled the Church with questions 
about degrees and offices of ecclesiastical calling, because 
" they principally ground themselves upon two places, that 
" all partiality laid aside they would sincerely weigh and 
examine whether they have not misinterpreted both places, 
and all by surmising incompatible offices where nothing is 
" meant but sundry graces, gifts, and abilities which Christ 
" bestowed. To them of Corinth his words are these : ' God 
" placed in the Church first of all some Apostles, secondly 
" Prophets, thirdly Teachers, after them powers, then gifts 
" of cures, aids, governments, kinds of languages. Are all 
" Apostles ? Are all Prophets? Are all Teachers? Is there 
" power in all ? Have all grace to cure ? Do all speak with 
tongues? Can all interpret? But be you desirous of the 
" better graces.' They which plainly discern first that some 
" one general thing there is which the Apostle doth here 
" divide into all these branches, and do secondly conceive 
that general to be church offices, besides a number of other 
difficulties, can by no means possibly deny but that many 
" of these might concur in one man, and peradventure in 
" some one all, which mixture notwithstanding their form 
" of discipline doth most shun. On the other side admit 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



51 



that communicants of special infused grace, for the bene- 
fit of members knit into one body, the Church of Christ, 
are here spoken of, which was in truth the plain drift of 
*' that whole discourse, and see if every thing do not answer 
in due place with that fitness which sheweth easily what 
*' is likeliest to have been meant. Por why are Apostles 
the first but because unto them was granted the reve- 
lation of all truth from Christ immediately? Why Pro- 
phets the second, but because they had of some things 
knowledge in the same manner? Teachers the next, be- 
cause whatsoever was known to them it came by hearing, 
yet God withal made them able to instruct, which every 
" one could not do that was taught. After gifts of educa- 
" tion there follow general abilities to work things above 
" nature, grace to cure men of bodily diseases, supplies 
against occurrent defects and impediments, dexterities to 
govern and direct by counsel, finally aptness to speak or 
interpret foreign tongues. Which graces not poured out 
" equally but diversely sorted and given, were a cause why 
not only they all did furnish up the whole body but each 
** benefit and help other. 

''Again the same Apostle otherwhere in like sort, 'To 
" every one of us is given grace according to the measure 
of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith. When He as- 
" cended up on high He led captivity captive, and gave 
" gifts unto men. He therefore gave some Apostles and 
some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors 
'' and Teachers, for the gathering together of saints, for 
" the work of the ministry, for the edification of the body 
" of Christ.' In this place none but gifts of instruction 
" are expressed. And because of teachers some were Evan- 
" gelists which neither had any part of their knowledge by 
" revelation as the Prophets and yet in ability to teach were 
" far beyond other Pastors, they are as having received 
" one way less than Prophets, and another way more than 



52 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



Teachers set accordingly between both. For the Apostle 

doth in neither place respect what any of them were by 
" office or power given them through ordination, bnt what 
" by grace they all had obtained through miraculous in- 

fusion of the Holy Ghost. For in Christian religion this 
" being the ground of our whole belief, that the promises 
" which God of old had made by His Prophets concerning 
" the wonderful gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost, where- 

with the reign of the true ^essias should be made glorious, 
" were immediately after our Lord's ascension performed, 
" there is no one thing whereof the Apostles did take more 
" often occasion to speak. Out of men thus endued with 

gifts of the Spirit upon their conversion to Christian faith 
" the Church had her ministers chosen, unto whom was 
" given ecclesiastical power by ordination, l^ovr because 
" the Apostle in reckoning degrees and varieties of grace 

doth mention Pastors and Teachers, although he mention 

them not in respect of their ordination to exercise the 
" ministry, but as examples of men especially enriched with 
" the gifts of the Holy Ghost, divers learned and skilful 
^' men have so taken it as if those places did intend to teach 

what orders of ecclesiastical persons there ought to be in 
" the Chmxh of Christ ^" 

To these remarks little need be added, except in the way 
of confirmation and inference. The gifts here spoken of 
belong, as Hooker well observes, not to any one portion of 
the Church, but to the whole of it. In 1 Cor. xii. 28, this 
is necessarily required by the whole tenor of the argument. 
" It is not necessary," the Apostle would say, that each 'of 
you should have all the gifts of the Spirit, but it is necessary 
that each of you should have some of them." In Eph. iv. 8, 
11, the substitution of the phrase eSooxe ("he gave") for e(9ero 

^ The remainder of the section lias been left out, as belonging to 
another part of this discussion. 



THE APOSTOLICAX OFFICE. 



53 



(''he set") "which is used in 1 Cor. xii. 28, has somewhat 
tended to obscure the similarity of sense between the two 
passages. But this substitution is evidently occasioned by 
the greater prominence of the idea of ''giving" in the later 
passage, in connexion with the quotation from Ps. Ixviii. in 
the 18th verse; and the 8th, the 13th, {ol Travres,) and 16th 
verses, {naa-a a(f)r], ) express in the strongest language the fact 
that the perfection of which the Apostle speaks as the ul- 
timate consummation of the Christian body was to be brought 
about not by the ministration of one part to the rest, but by 
the joint co-operation of all the parts together. 

Again, as Hooker also observes, these two passages speak 
not of any outward oflce, but of personal gifts and qualities, 
moral, intellectual, or physical. "Whatever obscurity may 
hang over particular parts in either of the passages, or (from 
its greater conciseness) over the whole of that in the Epistle 
to the Ephesians, there can be no doubt as to the meaning of 
those points which, as being the most prominent, naturally 
fix the meaning of the rest. — Of the name of "Apostle" 
{d7r6(TToXoii) which stands first in both catalogues, enough 
has already been said to shew its independence of any 
outward circumstance whatever. — The next in order, as 
well as in importance, is that of "Prophet" {irpoffirjTrjs). 
Of this office in the early Church, I have already spoken in 
connexion with the dedication of Paul and Barnabas to their 
first mission by the Prophets of Antioch. What was then 
said is confirmed by all else that we know on the subject. 
What was the character of the Hebrew Prophet, from which 
that of the Christian Prophet was immediately derived, (so 
much so that in some passages (Eph. ii. 20 ; 2 Pet. i. 19) 
it is difficult to distinguish one from the other,) is sufficiently 
known to us from the Old Testament. Confined to no tribe, 
or station, or sex, — sometimes found in the heroic chieftain 
or chieftainess of an insurgent people, as in the case of Ehud 
and Deborah, — sometimes in the precincts of the sanctuary, 



54 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



as Samuel, — sometimes in the palace of the kings, as Saul 
ai]d Darid, — -sometimes on the wild mountains and secluded 
pastures of the country, as Elijah and Amos ; the Prophet 
stands forth to us as the direct antithesis to all the more for- 
mal and positive parts of the Jewish system— -as the natural 
counterpoise to the more ceremonial element which was 
represented in the Priesthood — as tlie natural link which 
united the humhlest of the people to the anointed of the 
Lord who sate on the throne of David ^. And accordingly 
whilst the inauguration of Priest and King is detailed to us 
with the greatest precision, the Prophet with hardly a single 
exception ? appears at once as the messenger of God, without 
any outward or formal consecration id his office whatever. 
Schools indeed we hear of from the time of Samuel down to 
the end of the monarchy in which were educated those who 
were more or less gifted with the prophetical faculty ; but 
even those seem rather to have been intended to develope 
or excite the divine inspiration than to train their pupils to 
a distinct order in the commonwealth, and in all the most 
eminent of the number we have their own express statement, 
like that of St. Paul re&peeting his Apostleship, that they 
were first called to their mission by nothing short of the 
vision or voice of God Himself. 

Such were the essential features of that Prophetic office 
which after a long interval revived in the first burst of in- 
spired enthusiasm which ushered in the birth of Christianity. 
And the few traces which we gather of its history from the 
^N'ew Testament, amply prove that the chief difference be- 
tween its earlier and its later forms lay not in the additional 
restrictions, but in the additional* freedom and development 
which it acquired in its passage from the law of bondage to 
the law of liberty. There was still, as far as we can see, the 
same absence of any human or ceremonial inauguration to the 
* [See Lectures on the Jewish Churcli, vol. i. o. 19, 20.] 
8 1 Kings xix. 16. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



55 



office — its authority still rested on the heavenly message 
itself which was to be deliyered, and which, by disclosing 
to the hearer the secrets of his heart, caused him, like the 
Hebrew king of old ^, to fall down as in fascination before 
a power greater than his own, (1 Cor. xiv. 25). But the 
wish of Moses in the camp, that not one or two only, but 
that all of the Lord's people should prophesy, was now re- 
ceiving a higher fulfilment than in any previous time; 
whereas, even in the widest diffusion of the prophetical gifts 
in the age of Samuel or Isaiah, they had still been the 
exceptions, not the rule, so now they were the rule, not the 
exceptions ; the very modifications which they underwent 
arose from the fact that they had ceased to be particular and 
had become universal — that they were the expression not of 
isolated individuals, but of the whole collective Church. If 
in one single family there were no less than four daughters 
all known as prophetesses, (Acts xxi. 9) ; if in one whole 
society, though it might have been disorderly, yet it would 
not have been thought impossible or extraordinary for every 
member of it, male and female, to have prophesied even in the 
public assembly, (1 Cor. xi. 4 ; xiv. 24, 31, 34) ; it is obvious 
that the new epoch was truly described by St. Peter when on 
the day of Pentecost he saw, in the sudden disappearance of 
all previous barriers before the power of the new faith, the 
first adequate fulfilment of the words of Joel; "I will pour 
out My Spirit upon all flesh : and your sons and your daugh- 
ters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions 
and your old men shall dream dreams : and on My servants 
and on My hand-maidens I will pour out in those days of My 
Spirit; and they shall prophesy." (Acts ii. 17, 18.) 

The two instances of Apostle and Prophet, which, as in 

^ 1 Sam. xix. 24, where the word for " lay down" as applied to Sanl 
is the same, and used in the same sense, as that which is translated 
"falling" when appHed to Balaam in Numbers xxiv. 4. See Hengs- 
tenberg's comments on this passage in his History of Balaam, p. 140. 



56 



THE APOSTOLICAL OPFICE. 



order so in importance, stand first in the passages whicli 
have been quoted, will be enough to bear out the truth of 
Hooker's interpretation. Of the rest which are mentioned, 
some, ("miracles, gifts of healing, diversities of tongues," 
1 Cor. xii. 28,) will hardly be regarded by any one as be- 
longing to any especial order or office ; the last in particular, 
which occupied so prominent a place in the mind both of the 
Apostle and his readers, was evidently common to the whole 
Church, (1 Cor. xiv. 23,) and the usual accompaniment upon 
a sincere adoption of baptism, (Acts xix. 46 ; x. 46, 47). 
Others, ("teachers, helps, governments," 1 Cor. xii. 28; 
"evangelists, pastors," Eph. iv. 11,) are in themselves more 
ambiguous, and shall be spoken of in another connexion pre- 
sently. Meanwhile it cannot be doubted that the less cer- 
tain and less prominent points in these and similar passages, 
must be fixed by the meaning of the more prominent and 
more certain points, such as those that have been mentioned. 
It could hardly be intended to describe a system of regular 
orders and officers by heading it, or uniting it, with gifts and 
functions whose essential characteristic it was that they be- 
longed to no regular order or office whatsoever. 

"We can now therefore understand how it is that these gifts 
are spoken of as the necessary accompaniment — the natural 
expression, if I may so say, of a religion and a society, 
which was, in the highest degree, not formal and ceremonial, 
but moral and spiritual. "What the Apostles were in the 
highest sense, the Prophets, Evangelists, speakers with 
tongues, workers of miracles, were in a lower sense — the 
living representatives of all that was best and holiest in the 
Christian society — the living witnesses of that unseen Eriend 
and Master whose power and wisdom and goodness was 
shewn forth in their actions and lives. As the Apostles 
derived their especial character from their intercourse with, 
and appointment by Christ Himself, so these lower functions 
were called into existence by the Spirit of Christ in that 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



57 



great manifestation of power which, in the energy of its 
operations, belonged peculiarly to the first rise of the new 
religion. And as no later time has or can reproduce in all 
points the exact image of the ofS.ce of an Apostle, so no later 
time has ever witnessed, in any thing like its full extent, 
the same outpouring of spiritual gifts. "Prophesying," in 
its literal sense, was unknown after the close of the first 
century; "the gift of tongues," with the exception of one 
faint trace of it in the beginning of the second, so totally 
passed away, that its very name and nature was to the 
writers of the fourth and fifth centuries a hopeless riddle : 
and whatever may be the case with respect to the continu- 
ance of miracles in general after the generation of the Apo- 
stles and apostolic men, no one could think for a moment of 
comparing the scattered and disputed instances, few and far 
between, from the second to the fifth century, with the con- 
stant display of them which is implied in the Acts,^ in the 
two Epistles to Corinth, and in the Epistle of St. James. 

In this, their strict historical sense, all these gifts ceased 
with the cessation of the immediate circumstances which had 
called them forth, thereby adding one to the many marks 
which divide, as by an impassable barrier, the apostolical age 
from all that succeed. In another and a more general sense 
they can doubtless be still reproduced amongst us ; not, 
indeed, so truly as the office of the Apostles, inasmuch as 
they did not, in the first instance, rest so entirely on a moral 
and spiritual basis — inasmuch as they belonged essentially 
to those things which St. Paul expressly declared should 
"cease and vanish away'," whereas the apostolical autho- 
rity had its root in that Divine grace of which we are assured 
no less emphatically that it "never faileth." But by ana- 
logy, as has been often observed, these gifts are still a neces- 
sary growth of the perfected Christian society. If Christ be 
truly Lord of all, if to Him have truly been committed all 
i 1 Cor. xiii. 8. 



58 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



things both in heaven and earth, then it is no idle fancy, but 
the simple truth, that we may trace His hand not only in 
the extraordinary and supernatural, but in the ordinary and 
natural gifts of men — that the earliest form of the Christian 
society was, as it were, a microcosm of the world at large — 
that what was supplied to it in its first stage by miraculous 
intervention, is to be sought for now in the various faculties 
and feelings which it has comprehended within its sphere. 
And therefore it is truly a part of Christian edification to 
apply what St. Paul j and St. Peter have said of the diversity 
and relative importance and final cause of the first extra- 
ordinary display of the gifts of the Spirit, to the analogous 
variety of the gifts of imagination, reasoning powers, thought, 
activity, means of beneficence, whose co-operation in some 
degree is necessary to society for its very existence, whose co- 
operation in humbleness, disinterested love, and dependence 
on Him who gave them, is no less necessary to society for its 
perfection and full Christianization. 

The outward offices of the Apostolical Church. 
III. Such, strictly speaking, is the end of all that can be 
said on the formation of the early Christian Church as such. 
But, besides the Apostles, and those who were possessed of 
spiritual gifts, there are also ofiices and officers mentioned, 
not like these, in connexion with the innermost life of the 
Church, but as occupying posts of teaching and of govern- 
ment properly so called. It remains, then, to inquire what 
these were and what their relation to the Church of their 
own and of later times. 

The Seven Hellenists. 
1. The first certain mention of any such, is that of the 
Seven Hellenists appointed to preside over the distribution 

3 Kom. xii. 6 — 8 ; 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; 1 Pet. iv. 10, 11. See Arnold's 
Sermons, vol. ii. 217 ; vi. 300. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFITCE. 



59 



of charities at Jerusalem. (Acts vi.) Althongh their appoint- 
ment is only mentioned incidentally, not so much for its 
own sake as for the sake of introducing the history of the 
forerunner of St. Paul, — yet it may so far be regarded as in 
itself an epoch, that it constitutes the first instance of any 
direct administrative office in the Christian society, and, as 
such, furnishes us with the general principles on which all 
similar offices were founded during the apostolical age. 

(a.) The appointment is not described as necessarily re- 
sulting from any fixed principle of the Christian religion^ 
but as intended to meet a particular emergency, viz. the 
murmurs of the Hellenist widows, and the accumulation of 
work upon the Apostles. — And accordingly, whatever was 
required by the need, (eVt t^s xp^^^^ ravrrjs,) distributing, 
(vi. 3,) preaching to the new converts, (vi. 9; viii. 5, 26,) 
baptizing, (viii. 12,) they performed. — They are only men- 
tioned in connexion with the history of Stephen and Philip, 
(Acts vi. — viii. ; xxi. 7,) and their connexion with the 
"Deacons" {8idKovoi) in the later period of the apostolical 
age is doubtful ^. They may possibly have borne the name, 
and there was some likeness between their respective duties. 
But their usual appellation^ down to the time when the 

^ Such seems to have been the view of Chrysostom, (Horn, on Acts 
vi.) The council of Trullo (Can. 16.) also draws a distinction between 
the Seven, and the later deacons. (Concil, Labbe, torn. vi. p. 1149.) 

* One of them indeed (Acts xxi. 8) is called an " evangelist." But 
the context and usage of the word elsewhere makes it unlikely that 
it had any especial connexion with the of&ce of the " Seven J' 
1. Philip is so called in connexion with the prophetical gifts of 
his four daughters, which would rather lead us to suppose it to 
imply something of the same kind. 2. Such is also the sense re- 
quired by the context of Eph. iv. 11. 3. Timotheus is so called in 
2 Tim. iv. 5, and whatever may have been the nature of his post 
at Ephesus, it could hardly have been identical with that of the Seven 
at Jerusalem. [But see Professor Lightfoot's Essay in his Commen- 
tary on the Philippians, p. 185 — 189.] 



60 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



Acts were composed was "the Seven," (Acts xxi. 8,) as 
if in opposition to ''the Twelve." That is, on the one 
hand were the Apostles, maintaining the essentially moral 
and spiritual character of their office, by giving themselves 
up to prayer and the word — on the other hand were the 
Seven, directing all the outward arrangements of the visible 
society. And if, as Hooker says, ''tract of time has clean 
" worn out the first occasions for which their office was the 
" most necessary," (Eccl. Pol. v. 78. 5,) this should not pre- 
vent us from distinctly conceiving its original design. 

(b.) They were elected, not by the Apostles, still less, 
like Matthias, by lot, but by the whole society. And they 
were dedicated to their office with prayer and imposition 
of hands, either by the whole society, or by the Apostles 
in conjunction with them, exactly as Paul and Barnabas 
were afterwards dedicated to their first mission by the pro- 
phets of Antioch. All that the Apostles, as such, had to 
do with the matter, was the relief which it afforded them : 
in the appointment of the Seven, they acted, if at all, merely 
in conjunction with the rest. " Select from yourselves, not 
from us, {iTTLaK^^aaOe vfia>v,) men whom we (the whole 
Church — you and we together — not rjixe is distinctively) shall 

appoint to their work {mTda-Trjarofiev) ; whilst we {rjfieis Se) 

devote ourselves to prayer." And in like manner it is left 
ambiguous whether the Apostles, or the Church generally, 
are to be understood as "laying hands" upon them in Acts 
vi. 6«^. 

(c.) Whatever gifts were possessed by the Seven, they 
had not after, but before their dedication. "Look out men 

It is possible that ol airoaToKoi may be supplied fi-om ruv diro- 
aroXuv just before ; but the natural construction of the sentence 
would require the same nominative case to iir^drjKau as to iarriaav 
and e|e\e|a«/To, viz. rb -KXridos ; and that it was no unusual thing for 
others besides the Apostles to lay hands on their fellow Christians is 
evident from the case of Ananias in Acts ix. 17, of the Antiochene 
prophets in Acts xiii., and of believers generally in Mark xvi. 18, 19. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OrTTCE. 



61 



(not who are imperfectly supplied, or who are hereafter to 
be supplied, but who are already) full of the Spirit and of 
wisdom," i.e. of those qualities which would most naturally 
fit them for the office, and which (Acts ri. 10) they exercised 
in that office. 

The Elders and the Young Men. 

2. The same general features will be found, although less 
distinctly marked, in the next institution which we find. 
This is that of the Elders (npeo-^vTepoi), illustrated as it is 
by the apparently corresponding office of ''young men" (i/cw- 
Tfpot, or vedviaKoi.) Of its origin we have no regular account, 
partly because it was not like that of ''the Seven" connected 
with the progress of the apostolical history, partly also be- 
cause unlike the Seven, it was not called suddenly into ex- 
istence, but, as the name implies, and the nature of the 
office shews, grew up gradually from the natural allotment 
of certain functions to age and youth, and from the imita- 
tion, conscious or unconscious, of the Jewish synagogue. 
But we may safely infer that it could not have assumed 
any definite shape at the time of the appointment of the 
Seven : the whole account of that transaction evidently pre- 
cludes the notion of any governing body in the Church of 
Jerusalem besides the Apostles and the whole assembly ; and 
the first mention of the "presbyters" (Acts xi. 30) seems 
to imply that the very duty of presiding over the alms, which 
had been before the especial business of the Seven, was now 
allotted to them. If one might hazard a conjecture, it would 
be that when in process of time the Seven had been broken 
up by the death of one of their number (Acts vii. 50), and the 
settlement of another at Cjesarea (Acts xxi. 8), the outward 
superintendence of the Church, originally committed to them, 
now devolved upon those whose age and tried qualities fitted 
them to exercise it, whilst the more active and actual bodily 



62 



THE APOSTOLICAL OrPICE. 



labour would be discharged by the younger members'', who 
had from the first, according to the general feeling of the 
East, come forward to assist their elders. (Acts v. 6, 10.) 
In the case of these latter, who are only mentioned by 
that specific name once again, (1 Pet. v. 5,) the connexion 
between the office and the age is too evident to be oyer- 
looked for a moment. In the case of the Elders, though 
it must from the first have been slightly modified by the 
official sense in which the' corresponding Hebrew word was 
used in the services of the synagogue, — yet even to the very 
close of the first century it still retained something of its 
original meaning. St. Peter, in speaking of the presbyters, 
classes himself with them (1 Pet. v. 1) as a fellow elder 
(a-vixirpealSvTepos) merely on account of his own advanced age, 
St. John (2 John 1 ; 3 John 1) evidently for the same reason 
calls himself emphatically " the elder," (6 npea^vrepos.) And 
it is well known that the name of ''the elders" {ol Trp^a-- 
^vTepoi) was still used in the next generation not for any 
distinct office, but for those venerable men who were the 
depositaries of the last instructions of the Apostles. (Ire- 
nseus, passim. See Eothe, Anfange der Christlichen Kirche, 
i. 221.) 

The Bishops and Deacons. 

3. Such was the original office of the Elders, an office, 
like that of the Seven, originating in the needs of the 
particular Church of Jerusalem, and most frequently men- 
tioned in connexion with it; and though, as we shall see, 
the name was partially introduced into the Gentile societies, 
yet it is still in the predominantly Jewish Churches, and 
in the writings of the Apostles of the circumcision, James 
and Cephas and John, (Acts xi. 30; xv. 4, 22, 23; xxi. 18 ; 

" Compare the relation of Joshua to Moses, (Numb. xi. 28 ; Josh, 
i. 1,) expressed in both cases by the Hebrew word corresponding to 
the Greek depAirwv. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



63 



James v. 14 ; 1 Pet. v. 1 ; 2 and 3 John 1 ; Eev. iv. 4, 10; 
V. 6, 8, 11, 14; vii. 11, 13; xi. 16; xiv. 3; xix. 4,) that it 
is chiefly to be found, as if it still lingered within the circle 
of the forms of the synagogue and the atmosphere of eastern 
customs, to which, humanly speaking, it owed its birth. 

But the first wants of the early Churches were too similar 
all over the empire not to require the creation of similar 
offices to those which existed amongst the Churches of Judaea. 
It was a Gentile rather than Jewish office that was to be 
ennobled and sanctified by its introduction into the bosom 
of the Universal Church. The institution of two grades like 
those just mentioned, one for the discharge of the higher, the 
other for the discharge of the lower and more mechanical 
duties of the society, was at once so simple, and also so 
exactly in accordance with the familiar division of the 
higher and the subordinate magistrates of the Grecian com- 
monwealths, that nothing more than congenial names, and 
a slight modification to meet local difficulties, was needed to 
introduce it at once into the Gentile Churches. The first 
instance of the name of "elders" in a Gentile Society is 
that in which they are described as elected {x'^ipoTovr^aavres) 
by Paul and Barnabas on their first journey through the 
several Churches of Asia Minor, (Acts xiv. 23); and the 
next is when St. Paul called together "the elders of the 
Church" from Ephesus to receive his farewell address at 
Miletus, (Acts XX. 17.) But in the last of these cases the 
same persons whom the narrative calls "elders" are by the 
Apostle himself designated as "overseers" or "bishops" 
(eVt'o-KOTTouy) " over the flock," (xx. 28.) And although this 
name is probably used rather in its general than in its official 
sense, yet it is probable that we here see the first indications 
of that use of it which was in a short time to become almost 
universal. The eight earliest of St. Paul's Epistles contain 
no detailed direct allusion to the government of Christian 
societies j but at the close of his first imprisonment we find 



64 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



in the Epistle to the Philippians (i. 1), that the ''bishops" 
and ''deacons" are spoken of as the two bodies which had 
the supreme control of that Church; and in 1 Tim. iii. it is 
obrious that the only appointments with which Timotheus 
was concerned were those of "bishops" and "deacons." 
These were evidently the two correlative terms, as npea-IBv- 
repoi and i/eoorepot seem to have been before : exactly corre- 
sponding in their mutual relation to the apxovres and vTrr^pirai 
of the Grecian states : thus, in the language of the ISTew 
Testament, "bishop" {iniaKoiros) is never used in conjunc- 
tion with "younger" (i/ewrepos), nor "elder" {TrpealSvTepos) 
with "deacon" (biaKovos). Accordingly the above passages 
amply prove the offices of "bishop" and "presbyter," 
though slightly differing in origin, were in station and 
duties exactly identical. In the address of St. Paul (Acts 
XX. 28), if the word eirio-Korros is to be understood at all in 
its technical sense, it is applied to those who are called in 
XX. 17, "presbyters of the Church," (i.e., as the context 
indisputably implies, of the Church of Ephesus,) and who 
therefore cannot be regarded as independent heads of sepa- 
rate societies. In the Epistle to the Philippians (i. 1), it 
is no less evident that the "bishops" there spoken of con- 
stitute a body of several officers of equal rank within the 
single Church of Philippi ; and, if so, in a position corre- 
sponding to that elsewhere (Acts xi. 30 ; xiv. 23), denoted 
by the presbyterate. In the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, 
the identity of the offices is rendered still more apparent 
by the context in which the names occur. Titus is ordered 
to appoint at Crete presbyters with qualifications precisely 
corresponding to those required in the first Epistle to Timothy 
for bishops, and the reason for the necessity of such qualifi- 
cations is expressly said in both cases to be "because the 
"bishop must be of this character," (Tit. i. 5—7; 1 Tim. 
iii. 1 — 7). And further it is to be observed, that in 1 Tim. 
iii. 1 — 13, as in Phil. i. 1, no officers are mentioned, except 



THE APOSTOLICAL OPPICE. 



65 



**bisliops and deacons," a mode of speech which would be 
inexplicable if so important a body as that of presbyters had 
intervened between them. If it be asked how it happens 
that the name of presbyter" occurs at all in these Epistles 
(1 Tim. iv. 14; v. 1, 7; Tit. i. 5), in its official sense, when 
it was so nearly or so entirely superseded by the more recent 
term of bishop," it would appear that this transition is pre- 
cisely what the passages indicate : where the functionaries of 
the society were spoken of in their more general relation, 
they might still be designated by that respectful title of 

elder," which even in these Epistles is at times hardly 
distinguishable from that which would merely denote old 
age, (see 1 Tim. v. 1, 2 ; Tit.° ii. 2, 3 ;) whereas when their 
official qualifications are brought forward, it is at once ex- 
changed (as in Tit. i. 7) for the appellation of ''bishop," 
which to Gentile ears more naturally expressed this aspect 
of their position. 

It only remains to trace in detail the origin and growth 
of the two names of '' bishop" and deacon" in the Churches 
where we chiefly find them. In them, as in so many words 
in the New Testament, there is as it were a conflux of two 
trains of thought, an oriental and a western. In the earlier 
or more exclusively Jewish of the writings in the New Tes- 
tament, we find the name ''bishop" (eVto-KOTros) only in its 
more general sense, and in all these passages (Acts xx. 28, 

TTOifiaiveiv, ttoluvIco, i. 20, enavXis, 1 Pet. ii. 25, TroLjxeva, V. 2, 

noifidvare) it evidently expresses generally the watchful care 
and superintendance of a shepherd, and this, so far as it be- 
came incorporated into the phraseology of Jewish Christians, 
must doubtless have been its predominant meaning. But it 
was, as we have seen, in the Gentile Churches that the word, 
from the more general signification noticed above, passed into 
the name of an office ; and this result was doubtless accele- 

" In this passage the word is irp^a^vTas. 



66 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



rated by the fact that it had been already so used as the 
translation of civil and military offices by the Seventy ^ (see 
especially the elaborate use made of Is. Ix. 17, in Clem. Eom. 
42), who had themselves probably derived it from the name 
of the of&cers stationed by the Athenians in their subject 
towns, corresponding to the Harmost® of Lacedaemon \ 

It is evident in like manner that the word deacon" (Sta- 
Kovos), with its cognate verb and substantive, had acquired 
a religious sense indicative of a man's humble service of God 
and his brethren long before it was appropriated to any par- 
ticular office, and is perhaps more extensively used than any 
other for all the various functions of Christian life. This 
word however had also a hold on the Greek language from 
classical times, though not in quite so definite a form, as 
iirLo-KOTTos, sufficiently however to render its amalgamation 
easy, (see Buttmann's Lexilogus, p. 231 — 233); and it is 
accordingly only in the Gentile Churches^ that we find it, 
and that at a much earlier period than its correlative office 
of ''bishop," viz., Eom. xvi. 1. It is not here necessary to 
enter into the various changes which in after times distin- 
guished it from the simple office of the younger minister of 
the Christian synagogue. One modification however has ^ 
been remarked on its passage from the Jewish to the Gen- 
tile Churches, viz., the institution of female deacons, as 
we see at Cenchrea (Eom. xvi. 1), and perhaps at Ephesus 

p A similar transfer of the political phraseology of ancient Athens 
to Ciiristian and ecclesiastical uses may be seen in the words iKKXriaia 
and x^^poroi'e7y. A remarkable instance of the direct comparison of 
iKKX-qala in its Christian, and eKKhrjo-'ia in its Gentile or Pagan sense, 
may be seen in Origen (Contra Celsum, iii. 29, 30). 

1 Such at least was the opinion of Hooker, (Ecc. Pol. vii. 2, 2.) 
" The name ' bishop' hath been borrowed from the Grecians ;" which 
he defends by the passages often since quoted from Suidas (voc. eVt- 
aKonos), Dionys. Hal. Ant. ii, 76, Cic. ad Att. vii. 11. To these may 
be added Aristoph. Aves. 1022, with the Scholiast. 

' Eom. ivi. 1 ; 1 Tim. iii. 8 ; Phil. ii. 1. » Eothe, i. 2U. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFPICE. 



67 



(1 Tim. V. 8 — 19); not improbably from the greater delicacy 
required in dealing with the female converts in Greek society, 
where, as Grotins well observes, the female portion of the 
household [yvvaiKcovrjris) was closed against male intruders. 

These then are all the offices, properly speaking, which 
we can discover in the early Church. Other names indeed 
occur, also evidently denoting an official eminence, as ol 
npoia-Taixevoi, Eom. xii. 8 ; 1 Thess. v. 12, (evidently used 
as the most general name for the presiding body,) ot rjyov- 
fxevoL, Heb. xiii. 7, (since adopted by the Greek clergy as 
a title for the heads of monastic establishments,) ol Karrj- 
Xovvres, (Gal. vi. 6) ; but it is so natural to suppose that they 
were either substantially the sanie as the elders and over- 
seers, or (as is more likely) provisional officers who were 
afterwards blended with them, that this point requires no 
further discussion. Nor again is it necessary to prove at 
length the wholly temporary character of the office, if it 
may be called an office, which Timotheus and Titus held 
respectively at Ephesus and Crete, of whom the first was 
governor of the Church only in Paul's absence, 1 Tim. iv. 13 ; 
i. 3, and left it altogether before Paul's death, 2 Tim. iv. 9, 
and the second was to leave the island that very winter, 
2 Tim. iv. 10; Tit. iii. 12*. Kor can any ecclesiastical in- 
stitution be deduced from the mention of the ''angels" of 
the seven Churches, in the total absence of any proof for 
such an application of the word in the apostolic age, and 
against the uniform use of it in all other parts of the Apo- 

* This is besides almost required by the improbability of supposing 
Timotheus to have remained at Ephesus after the arrival of St, John, 
or of ascribing to Titus (contrary to the practice of that or of any of 
the early ages of Christianity) the regular episcopal superintendence 
not of any one of the hundred cities, but of the whole island of Crete. 
And it may be observed that Chrysostom in his HomiUes on the Pas- 
toral Epistles never gives the name of bishop either to Timotheus 
or Titus. 



68 THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 

calypse in its usual sense of a heavenly messenger, which, 
seems to be required especially in this place by the obviously 
' gurative and prophetical style of the whole address in which 
the term occurs. It is evident that the Churches are there 
described as personified in their guardian or representative 
Angels. Compare Matt, xviii. 10: "Their Angels do al- 
ways behold the face of M.j Father which is in Heaven." 
Dan. X. 13 : " The piince of Persia" — " the prince of Grecia." 
No one supposes that the "seven angels" with the seven 
trumpets" in Rev. viii., x., or the " seven angels" with the 
seven vials" in Eev. xv., xvi., or the ''four angels" with 
the "four winds" in Eev. vii. 1, are Bishops. And it is 
clear from the language in which the " seven angels of the 
seven Churches" are spoken of, that the word then is 
used in a similar sense. (Eev. i. — -iii.) "Thy works," "thy 
candlestick," "thy first love," " thy nakedness," and many 
like expressions, indicate that it is not the individual officer, 
but the personified Church which is addressed. Such also 
was the interpretation of the passage by Origen, Horn. xx. 
in IS'um. (see Bingham, Book II. c. 2,) and such was the 
popular view of it in the middle ages, as appears from the 
rude representations of the angels standing in their seven 
Church towers, both in illuminated MSS. of the Apocalypse, 
and in the grotesque carvings from the Apocalypse on the 
roofs of some cathedral-cloisters. 

Accidental Union, lut Essential Distinction, hetween 
the Gifts and the Offices. 

Such then is the difference between the apostolical and 
the spiritual gifts of the eaiiy Church, on the one hand, 
and its offices on the other hand. That the two were fre- 
quently blended in the same persons is of course not only 
likely but certain to have happened, even were no traces of 
such a union expressly recorded. " As every man hath re- 
" ceived a gift {eXa^ev p^dpicr/ia), even so minister the same 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



69 



" one to another (i.e., for your mutual profit, els eavTovst 
comp. 1 Cor. xii. 27), as good stewards of the manifold 
" grace of God ; if any man speak, let him speak as the 
oracles of God ; if any man minister, let him do it as of 
*' the strength {tarxvos) which God supplies (x^pvye'i), that in 
all alike God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to 
whom (i.e., as the source of these gifts) is the glory and 
the power (i.e., the glory of the teaching and the power 
of the strength) for ever and ever." (1 Pet. iv. 10, 11.) 
Such doubtless was the general principle on which those 
who were endowed with the different gifts chose or were 
appointed to the different offices in which they could best 
exercise them; some, according to the division here sug- 
gested, in accordance with Rom. xii. 6 — 8; 1 Cor. ^ xii. 28, 
by their moral or intellectual character rather entitling a 
man to the function of teaching, others by the more out- 
ward and physical activity, which was also counted as a 
gift of God, being more suitable to the functions of govern- 
ment or of administration to external wants. The possession 
of these gifts was what (in the language of later ages) con- 
stituted the Divine call" to the offices of the Church; the 
subsequent appointment to these offices corresponded in like 
manner to the actual ceremony of the present ''ordination." 
Accordingly, as time went on, the two spheres would natu- 
rally become concentric, the gifts which in Rom. xii. 6 — 8 ; 
1 Cor. xii. 28, are freely distributed through the whole com- 
munity, appear in the later enumeration of Eph. iv. 11, to be 
represented in the more fixed and concrete form of evange- 
lists," ''pastors and teachers," who in their turn are thrown 
into the shade in the yet later Epistles by the more formal 
array of " bishops and deacons," who like Timotheus in his 

^ The gift of tongues in this passage is put last, perhaps as the one 
of which the Apostle was especially speaking : otherwise they are ar- 
ranged as in 1 Pet. iv. 10 ; Eom. xii. 6, first the gifts of " speaking," 
then of " action " or " strength." 



70 



THE APOSTOLICAl OFFICE. 



post ^ at Ephesus might well be called to find in their new 
offices the fittest scope for the exercise of those gifts of 
''government," of "knowledge," of "teaching," and of 
"ministering," which they had received long before at their 
conversion. 

But the two things are not the less essentially distinct. 
The former belong to the Church, strictly as the Church, 
as a spiritual society of which Christ was the head, and all 
its members religiously equal in the sight of God, although 
endowed by Him with various gifts for the perfection of the 
whole body. The latter belong to the Church, not as the 
Church at all, but so far forth as the Church, dwelling on 
earth and amongst men, is constrained to borrow the forms 
of the world. It is not without significance that, whilst 
the name at least of the chief of those offices was amongst 
the Jewish Chi^istians borrowed from the existing institu- 
tions of the synagogue, amongst the Gentile Christians it 
was, as we have seen, derived from those of Greece and 
Eome. And in like manner, all the other names by which 
their functions were first designated, sprung not from the 
religious but the civil vocabulary of the time ; and the ideas 
which they first suggest to those well read in the history of 
the times, are not of spiritual, but of political power. " Ordo" 
(the origin of the present "orders") was the well-known 
name of the municipal senates of the empire, "ordinatio" 
(the original of our "ordination") was never used by the 
Eomans for their religious ceremonies ; the " diocese" already 

' 1 Tim. iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. i. 6. The comparison of these passages 
with 1 Tim. i. 18 confirms the conclusion to which we are led hy the 
general analogy of the apostoUcal history, and to which this transac- 
tion if otherwise interpreted would form the only exception, that the 
" gift " which Timotheus was to " stir up " had been received by him 
at his first conversion. Acts xvi. 1, 2. Comp. Acts ii. 38 ; viii. 17 ; ix. 
17 ; X. 44 ; xix. 6 ; Gal. iii. 5 ; in all of which passages the " gifts " fol- 
ow not upon the ordination, but on the conversion of the converts^ 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



71 



existed in the divisions of the Eoman empire : the earliest 
place of Christian assembly was not a temple, but a basilica : 
the stern counsels of the first bishops ;are couched in the very- 
language of the consuls and senates of the ancient republic : 
the Papacy itself, according to the well-known expression of 
Hobbes, of which the truth up to a certain point will not be 
disputed by any, was ''the ghost of the deceased Eoman em- 
"pire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof^." 

In saying thus much I have slightly outstepped the limits 
of the apostolic age ; because, from the nature of the case, 
there was not in the apostolic age sufficient scope for the 
idea to develope itself. But though the intensely moral and 
spiritual character of the whole period precluded the possi- 
bility of any complete organization such as existed in the 
Church a few years later, yet it is not to be denied, that in 
the last stage of the lives of the two great Apostles of the 
Asiatic Churches, St. Paul and St. John, we see something 
like the beginning of a new and complete institution growing 
up under their hands. We see it both on its good and evil 
side, on the one hand in the appointment of Timotheus and 
Titus by St. Paul., temporary though it seems to have been, 
and in the establishment of single officers in some at least of 
the Asiatic cities y by St. John ; on the other hand, in Dio- 
trephes striving to have the first place (3 John 9), and in 
the nameless individual whom Clement of Home charges 
with usurping the rights of the Corinthian presbyters, (Clem. 
Eom. c. 47, 54,) we see the shadows cast before by the 
events of the coming age — the little cloud at first like a 
man's hand, which was destined to overspread the whole 
heaven — the earliest indications of that illustrious office, 

^ See Hooker, Ecc. Pol. vii. 8. 7. Gibbon, c. xv. note 147. 

Sttov 8e Kkripcfy eua ye riva KXr^puxrccu, toov viro rov irvevixaros arifxaivO' 
fievwu. Eus. H. E. iii. 23. " Ordo episcoporum ad originem recensus, 
in Joannem stabit auctorem.'' Tert. adv. Marc. iv. 5. 



72 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



which was to assume such gigantic proportions in the days 
of Ignatius, of Cyprian, and of Gregory. 

To pursue these indications into their expansion in later 
history would he foreign to the present purpose ; but it will 
not be out of place to add, in conclusion, a few words to 
point out how they contain elements of instruction which we 
could ill spare from the sacred volume, and which amply 
justify the parting gleam shed upon them by the latest 
writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles, by the latest care of 
the Beloved Disciple. 

First, these institutions serve in some measure to con- 
nect the apostolical period with that which followed it; 
they were indeed but the outward frame-work of the Spirit, 
but still they were something tangible and visible for the 
Christians of the first age to hand on in bodily form to their 
successors, and for the Christians of the second age to look 
back upon as having, in very truth, grown up under the 
shadow of apostolic authority, and amidst the blaze of apo- 
stolic miracles. We stop at the last Epistle of St. Paul to 

Timothy," it has been said, with something of the same 
" interest with which one pauses at the last hamlet of the 
^' cultivated valley, when there is nothing but moor beyond. 
* ' It is the end, or all but the end, of our real knowledge of 
"primitive Christianity; there we take our last distinct 
" look around; further the mist hangs thick, and few and 

distorted are the objects which we can discern in the midst 

of it'." This is perfectly true. Still it is something for us 
now — it must have been something for the Christians of the 
second and third centuries to be able to trace in those " few 
" and distorted objects," a likeness, faint it may be and 
merely external, but still a likeness to the forms which we 
last saw before the mist closed in upon us ; we know how 
precious are the relics of characters, or periods, which have 



« Arnold's Sermons, vi. p. 336. 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



73 



passed away from us ; and we can well understand how 
dearly the generation which succeeded to the times of Paul 
and of John, must have cherished the links which bound 
them, however slightly, to the institutions amongst which 
Paul and John had actually lived and moved. 

Secondly, the prominent position which these offices of 
government occupy in the closing period of the apostolic age, 
implies a sanction — it might perhaps without offence be said 
— a sanctification of the principle of government generally. 
"When we contemplate the active freedom, the universal 
excitement, the preternatural energies, of the Christian so- 
ciety, as implied in the earlier Epistles, we might be led to 
doubt whether any outward and administrative institution 
was not in itself an infringement on the original apostolical 
conception of a Christian Church. But when we find the 
attention bestowed on institutions of this kind in the pastoral 
Epistles of St. Paul, and in the best-authenticated traditions 
of St. John, we learn that here also the harmony of God's 
dispensation has been preserved, and that this element of 
human interest, though still subordinate to the higher moral 
and spiritual ends of the whole society, has not been over- 
looked in the comprehensive sphere of apostolic teaching. 
The well-known injunctions in Rom. xiii. 1 — 6, and 1 Pet. 
ii. 20, to obey the authorities of the Roman empire, as 
ministers of Grod, had already prepared us to regard the 
power of government as an object to be held in respect and 
admiration by its Christian subjects — to invest, as it has 
been said, " even those laws which we call the common 
" machinery of government," with something of a divine cha- 
racter. The passages of which we are now speaking, whether 
in the writings or the actions of the later period of the apo- 
stolic age, carry us yet a step further. They teach us that 
these offices of outward administrative power may not only 
be reverenced by Christians, as existing without the pale of 
Christianity, but may also be held by Christians themselves, 



74 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFFICE. 



within the pale of Christianity, without fear of degrading 
or secularizing their higher calling as citizens of heaven. 
Further than this the veil could not be withdrawn except 
by a miraculous anticipation of the whole course of the 
world's subsequent history ; but so far as the apostolic sanc- 
tion could be given to the Christian use of social functions in 
so simple, and, politically speaking, so subordinate a body as 
the first Christian society, so far it was given, and is capable 
of an infinite variety of applications, not ecclesiastical only, 
but civil, down to the latest stage of the world's existence. 

Too much time perhaps has been expended in the fore- 
going pages on the proof of facts which are familiar to every 
student of this portion of Christian antiquity, and which 
have been long ago summed up in the obvious remark of 
Bingham, (ii. 19, 3,) that all Churches had not immediately 

all the same Church officers on their first foundation, but 
" time was required to complete their constitution." But, 
not to mention that these facts are still often forgotten 
amidst the echoes of controversies which have themselves long 
since died away, it is not unimportant to observe the testi- 
mony which, so far as they go, is borne by them to the 
genuineness of the Epistles which embody them. It will be 
observed that the state of things implied by them resembles 
indeed more or less the indications preserved to us in the 
writings immediately subsequent, such as Clement, but is 
wholly distinct from any thing after the middle of the second 
century. By that time not only the whole constitution 
of the Asiatic Churches had been altered, but the very 
terms by which its offices were expressed had changed their 
meaning. It is not perhaps impossible, but surely it is in 
a very high degree improbable, that works, which speak 
only of presbyters and deacons, should have been composed 
during or after a period when, as even the genuine remains 
of Ignatius testify, the authority of a single person was 
regarded as the one object of paramount importance — when 



THE APOSTOLICAL OFPICE. 



75 



it must have required an effort of imagination wholly un- 
congenial to the habits of the time, to assume the language 
of a former age on the very points respecting which the 
greatest changes had taken place. And if it is only by slow 
degrees, and after the lapse of many centuries, that the 
original meaning of these passages has been discovered, it 
may afford some satisfaction to the Christian student to 
reflect that this is one of the cases, referred to before, where 
modern criticism has been allowed to furnish an evidence 
to the truth of the apostolical writings, which to the vague 
apprehensions of an earlier age was wholly or in part denied. 
"We may lament that we can no longer find in the Pastoral 
Epistles the exact mirror of our own institutions — that we 
cannot anticipate half a century by calling Timotheus the 
bishop of Ephesus, or by elevating that venerable name as 
it occurs in the pages of the IsTew Testament to the single 
dignity which it has since acquired. But it is surely a com- 
pensation to feel far more truly than heretofore in their 
perusal that the very contrast between the earlier and later 
signification of the words employed sets a seal on their his- 
torical value — and to be reminded by the absence of that 
complete organization which was reserved by God's good 
Providence for subsequent times, that we have not descended 
from the higher region of the apostolic age, that we are 
still moving not amidst the forms belonging to a particular 
period, but amidst the general principles which best accorded 
with the first beginnings of His Church, and can be applied 
for its guidance in all future ages alike. 



SEEMON 11. 



MATT. xvi. 18, 19. 

Thou aet Petee, aot) tjpon" this eock I will build My 
Chuech, and the gates of hell shall not peeyail 
against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of 

THE KINGDOM OF HEAYEN, AND WHATSOEYEE THOU SHALT 
BIND ON EAETH, SHALL BE BOUND IN HEAYEN, AND WHAT- 
SOEYEE THOU SHALT LOOSE ON EAETH, SHALL BE LOOSED IN 
HEAYEN. 

In continuing the subject which I opened to you 
some time since from this place, when I attempted 
to set before you the general character and position 
of the three great Apostles, St. Peter, St. Paul, and 
St. John, it must now be my endeavour to exhibit, 
so far as one part of so complex an enquiry can be 
separated from another, the first of the Three, St. 
Peter, both in his historical relation to the age in 
which he lived, and also in the practical application 
of his life and example to ourselves. 

Whatever difficulty exists in recalling any part 
of the apostolical age, exists in the highest degree 
with regard to the earliest period of it represented 
to us by St. Peter. It is not only that his character 
is less strongly reflected in the writings which bear 



SEEM, n.] 



ST. PETEE. 



77 



his name, but that the outward sphere and scope of 
his action, the cotemporary mode of thinking and 
feeling with regard to him, belongs, far more than 
in the case of the other two, to a state of things 
which has long passed away, not only from our ex- 
perience, but from our very thoughts and imagina- 
tions. We must banish from our minds not only 
all the recent controversies with which his name has 
been connected, but all those images of the later 
epoch even of the apostolical age itself, with which 
the Epistles of St. Paul have made us familiar ; we 
must go back in thought to a time even before the 
name of Paul was known, or if known, known only 
to be suspected and feared — when the dawn of Chris- 
tianity was but just breaking over the eastern sky, 
and men were too deeply absorbed in watching the 
first streaks of sunlight catch the mountain - tops, to 
look round on the wide and varied prospect which 
was opening to their view on every side. Still there 
is something in the very remoteness of the scene, 
something in the very twilight of that earl}^ morn- 
ing, something in the very shade that veils so much 
from our sight, which invests with additional in- 
terest any image however faint of the only living 
object that we can discern, and which may render 
this enquiry profitable, even though its only result 
should be to impress upon us not our knowledge, but 
our ignorance. 

I. It is naturally in the first stage of St. Peter's 
life that we must look for the leading idea of his 
whole character. Progress indeed there was in him 
as in the other two, but there was no marked and 



78 



ST. PETER. 



[seem. 



abrupt change from his former self, no sudden con- 
version as in St. Paul, no wide chasm of which we 
know nothing as in St. John. What he was when 
we first knew him, that same man, sanctified, softened, 
strengthened, he was down to the end. He was then 
and he still continues to be, in a sense which was true 
only of himself, the representative of the original 
apostolical brotherhood, of those who had seen the 
Lord face to face, of those who dwelt in the earliest 
recollections of that time preserved to us in the two 
earliest Gospels, both in an especial manner^ con- 
nected with his name and teaching. What he was, 
that we see clearly they in a lower degree were also. 
He was exactly what he has been well called by those 
to whom that highest conception of ancient poetry was 
still a living image. He was in the words of Chryso- 
stom^ the "Coryphaeus" of the devoted band, which, 
like the Chorus of the Grecian Tragedy, watched the 
unfolding, part by part, of that awful drama, half 
actors half spectators, from its opening scene to its 
final crisis. He is the central figure round which 

* It would require too long a discussion to enter fully on the con- 
nexion of the two first Gospels with St. Peter. It will suflS.ce to ob- 
serve with regard to that according to St. Matthew, that internal 
and external evidence alike represent it as the Gospel of the Jewish 
Churches with which St. Peter was especially connected, and that 
some of its recensions actually bore the name of Peter. See Theo- 
doret (Haer. Fab. ii. 2), and the long argument on the subject in 
Mayerhoff's Petrus, p. 235 — 303. And with regard to the Gospel ac- 
cording to St. Mark, the strong internal evidence of a kindred origin 
with St. Matthew's Gospel is confirmed by the unanimous tradition 
which recognises in it the substance of St. Peter's teaching as com- 
municated to his companion and interpreter. 
Chrysost. ad Matt. xvi. 16. 



n.] 



ST. PETER. 



79 



they all move; in his hopes and aspirations, advanc- 
ing, wavering, baffled, triumphant, we see the hopes 
and aspirations of them all ; in his impassioned acts 
and words, we catch the energetic expression of that 
which in them is silent or motionless ; in that strong 
Jewish enthusiasm, which is the key to his whole 
character, clinging to the forms of the ancient law, 
yet with his heart open to their true fulfilment, we 
see the natural leader of those whose especial office 
it was to be at once the last link in the line of Jewish 
prophets, the first in the line of Christian Apostles. 

Of all the three Apostles, as of God's chosen in- 
struments in other times and for other purposes, it 
must be remembered that there was a correspondence 
between their work and their character. Discover 
the one, and you have discovered the other. The 
call was made by Providence, and to that call their 
lives were the answer. It is when the fields are 
white unto the harvest that the Lord of the harvest 
sends forth His labourers to gather it in. 

It is difficult for us now to conceive the moment of 
suspense, when in the language of St. John, He who 
was the Light and the Life of the world " came unto 
His own, and His own received Him not." The 
yearnings of ages were accomplished, the law and the 
prophets were fulfilled, yet " the world knew Him not 
even the greatest of those that had been born of 
" women," could not cross the threshold of " the king- 
" dom of heaven ^ :" even within the nearest circle of 
all. His kinsmen drove Him forth, and His brethren 
believed not on Him ^. "Where then was the smoking 

«= John i. 11. ^ Matt. xi. 1. * Luke iv. 29 ; John vii. 5. 



80 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. 



flax which, the spark should kindle into life? Who 
or what was to bridge over this chasm between the 
old and the new dispensations? Who was to take 
the first step without which even the wisdom of Paul 
and the love of John could have found no fitting 
place? Was Caiaphas indeed the representative of 
the whole people of Israel, as he deemed himself or 
was by others deemed to be, or was it still possible 
to find traces of that nobler influence, so characteristic 
of the better spirits of the older times, wbo stood fast 
indeed on "the ancient ways," but wh.o^, unlike all 
the other nations of antiquity, turned not backward 
to an irrecoverable past, but forward to a distant 
future ? 

It would be needless, perhaps, to look for any out- 
ward circumstances to account for feelings, which, if 
they existed at all, must have been implanted from 
above in the inmost depths of the human heart. Yet 
if we were to turn especially to any one part of Pales- 
tine for such, a faithful likeness of the ancient glory 
of God's people as was needed to supply this want, 
it would be amongst the mountains of Galilee, or the 

^ See Bacon's paraphrase of the often - quoted text "Stare super 
" antiquas vias." " That we stand upon the ancient ways and then 
" look about us^ and discover what is the straight and right way, 
" and so to walk in it." (Essay on Innovations.) Compare Tho- 
luck's first Appendix to his Commentary to the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. — "The Jew was especially an 'homme de I'avenh,' a 
" 'homo desideriorum.' " It is impossible in a passing remark to 
enlarge upon this remarkable featm-e in the character of the chosen 
people. The golden age of Palestine was not in the past but in 
the future ; the epic of their history was in theu' prophecies ; the 
hero, if one may so speak, of their national affections was no divine 
ancestor of remote antiquity, but the Messiah who was " to come." 



n.] 



ST. PETER. 



81 



secluded villages which line the shores of its inland 
sea. There, as we are reminded by St. Matthew ^, 
" in the borders of Zebulon and Naphtali'^ — amidst 
the recollections of those heroic tribes who had once 
" jeopardied their lives unto the death'' against the 
host of Jabin — under the very shadow of those ancient 
hills which had once echoed the triumphant strains of 
Deborah and of Barak, was nursed that burning zeal, 
that unbroken patriotism, which made the name of 
Galilean so formidable even to the legions of the em- 
pire. There, far removed from the mingled despotism 
and corruption of the schools and courts of Jerusalem, 
out of the country, from which the chief priests and 
scribes were proudl}^ convinced that no prophet could 

8 Matt. iv. 15. The general sense of this passage, as of Isa. ix. 
1, 2, from which it is quoted, is, that even the most despised and 
remote parts of Palestine shall share in the future glory of the 
Messiah's kingdom. (See Ewald, ad loc.) And in one sense it 
might be said that the Galileans were so mixed up with the sur- 
rounding Phoenician tribes as to be more than half Gentiles. 
This, however, does not interfere with the Jewish zeal here as- 
cribed to them. They were, as distinct from the inhabitants of 
Judasa, the peasantry of Palestine. However much the purity 
of their race may have suffered from their mixture with hea- 
then neighbours, their manners must have been less exposed than 
those of their southern countrymen to the contagion of Greek and 
Eoman influence. It is amongst the followers of the Galilean 
Judas, perverted as their zeal might be, that we find the last 
trace of the mingled spirit of national independence and rehgious 
enthusiasm which had in former days characterized the struggle 
of the Maccabees against Antiochus : it is in the fideUty and affec- 
tion of the Galilean peasants to their protector Josephus, that we 
find the simple feelings of self-devotion and gratitude which were 
vainly sought for in the Sanhedrin and the metropolis. (See Joseph. 
B. J. ii. 8. 1 ; Ant. xviii. 1. 26 ; xx. 5. 2. Vita passim, but especially 
c. 42, 43, 50.) 

G 



82 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. 



arise, we might fairly look for the freer and purer 
development of those older yearnings after the future, 
of that undying trust in the invisible, which had once 
characterized the Jewish race — for an ardent hope of 
the promised deliverance, yet not hardened into formal- 
ism by the traditions of the Pharisee — for a soaring 
aspiration after divinity not yet chained to earth by 
the unbelief of the Sadducees. 

Such were all the Galilean Apostles — such espe- 
cially was Simon surnamed the Rock. No priest of 
the house of Levi, no warrior of the host of Judah, 
ever burnt with more fervent zeal in behalf of God's 
chosen people; no prophet ever waited in more rapt 
expectation for the hope of the coming Deliverer, as 
it dawned upon him through the earthly images which 
bounded his immediate view in Babylon, or Edom, or 
Jerusalem, than did the fisherman of Galilee as he 
hung upon the words and looks of that unknown 
Teacher who appeared on the shores of His native 
lake. Gradually, dimly, doubtfully, the vision rose 
within his mind ; sometimes an awful consciousness of 
some Divine Presence, which, like Gideon or Manoah, 
he "prayed to depart from him^;" sometimes of an 
earthly empire, in which they who had " left all and 
" followed Him should reign as satraps of the King 
of Sion ; sometimes of the blaze of glory which rested 
on the ancient tabernacle, as when he woke upon the 
holy mount, and spoke "not knowing what he said^" 
But, amidst all these dark and wavering images, his 
face was set in the right direction ; and therefore, in 

i Lute v. 8. I' Matt. xix. 27. 

» Luke ix. 33. 



n.] 



ST. PETEE. 



83 



that memorable scene of which every detail of place 
and circumstance is described to us with unusual pre- 
cision, when at Csesarea Philippi, far withdrawn from 
the gaze of the multitude beneath the snowy heights 
of Hermon, the question was solemnly put, "But 
" whom say ye that I am ™?'^ the heavenly truth flashed 
upon him, and his whole being expressed itself in the 
words which did indeed contain the meeting point 
between the two dispensations ; " Thou art the Christ, 
" the Son of the Living God;'' the anointed Messiah, 
whom prophets and kings had desired to see; the 
Son of Him, who once again, as at the burning 
bush, had come with overliving power to visit and 
redeem His people. Well might the solemn blessing 
which follows announce to us, as with a trumpet's 
voice, that this was at once the crisis of Peter's life 
and of the Christian faith. " Thou hast told Me what 
" I am, and I will tell thee what thou art." In that 
confession were wrapt up the truths which were to be 
the light of the future ages of Christendom ; on him 
who had uttered it devolved at once the awful privilege 
of passing from the Jew into the Christian ; from the 
Prophet to the Apostle ; from Simon the son of Jonah, 
into Peter the Rock. 

Gradually too, and doubtfully, and with many a wild 
and wayward impulse, did the enthusiasm of Peter 
kindle not merely into admiration for the Divine 
Teacher, but love for the Divine Friend. That central 
fire which was the life of the whole career of every 
one of the Apostles, so far as they were Apostles at 
all, in him existed, not more deeply and truly, it may 

^ Matt. xvi. 15. 



84 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. 



be, but more visibly, as the one absorbing element into 
which his natural enthusiasm resolved itself. Amidst 
all the impetuous sallies of zeal — amidst all the weak- 
nesses consequent on his presumption and vehemence 
— whether when he drew the sword in the garden, or 
gave way to the panic of the moment in the house of 
Caiaphas, this was still the sustaining, purifying, re- 
storing principle ; " He needeth not save to wash his 
" feet, and was clean every whit°." 

Whatever else might be the feelings with which he 
looked upon our Lord — with whatever grounds the 
early Church may have traced to his hand the repre- 
sentation of the Prophet and Lawgiver, which is pre- 
served to us in the Gospel ^ according to St. Matthew, 
it may have been a true feeling which ascribed to his 
more personal and direct teaching that second Gospel 
which, though in substance the same, is yet so re- 
markably contrasted with it in the minuteness p and 
liveliness with which it records the outward actions, 
the look and manner, the very Syriac words which 

" John xiii. 10. 

° E.g. Matt. V — vii., x., xiii,, xviii. 15 — 20 ; xxiii., xxiv., xxv., xxviii. 
18—20. 

p Compare for minute details, Mark v. 4, 13 ; vi. 21, 39 ; viii. 24 ; 
xi. 12, 13, 20 ; xiii. 1, 3 ; xiv. 51, 52, 68 ; for the outward look and 
manner, vii. 34 ; viii. 12, 23 ; x. 16 ; for the Syriac words, Epphatha, 
vii. 34 ; Talitha Cumi, v. 41 ; Abba, xiv. 36. Inasmuch however as 
this vividness of description is also to be found in passages, such 
as the description of Herod's banquet, (vi. 21,) where it cannot be 
traced to any ocular observation either of the Apostle or Evangelist, 
all that can safely be noticed in regard to the alleged connection 
between the Gospel of St. Mark and St. Peter, is the predominant 
attention devoted to the outward and the local, compared with the 
inward and spiritual part of our Lord's ministry. 



ST. PETEE. 



85: 



fell from Him who there appears not merely as the 
Fulfiller of the ancient covenant, but in the closer 
and more personal relation of the human Protector 
and Friend — a Friend not only in boundless power 
and goodness, but in all human sympathy and ten- 
derness. "He loved St. John exceedingly," says 
Chrysostom, "but it was by Peter that He was 
" exceedingly beloved." And therefore, as the more 
intellectual crisis of Peter's character and work (if 
I may so say) is represented to us in the scene to 
which I have just alluded at Csesarea Philippi, so its 
moral phase is determined by that second scene on 
the shore of the sea of Tiberias, which the art of the 
painter has instinctively blended with it, when on 
the thrice -repeated declaration not only of general 
affection, but of the deep personal love of a human 
friend [Kvpue olBa<$ on ^l\o) cre^,) — once again, in 
language more indefinite, but not less solemn than 
on the earlier occasion, that second blessing was pro- 
nounced, whose echoes are still reverberated to us alike 
from their fulfilments or their perversions, down to the 
latest ages, "Feed My sheep ; feed My lambs ^'.^ 

11. And now let us carry our thoughts a few years 
forwards and place ourselves in that early period of 
the Christian Church, of which our only historical re- 
cord is to be found in the twelve first chapters of the 
Acts. It is indeed a scene only known to us dimly 
and partially ; the chronology, the details of life, the 
characters and fortunes of the several Apostles, are 
wrapt in almost impenetrable darkness. One colossal 

See Essay on the Promises to Peter. 
' John xxi. 15 — 17. 



86 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. 



figure however emerges from the gloom, now more 
than ever the representative of his brethren, though 
from twelve they have grown to many thousands ; 
though from the little flock of the first Apostles they 
are growing into a vast society striking its roots far 
and wide wherever the Jewish race extends. This, 
if ever, was the time when those promises to Peter 
which I have just quoted recurred to the minds of 
the disciples with all the force of prophecies which 
had received their full accomplishment. Then, if ever, 
when they saw him stand forth in the front of the 
whole body of the believers, in their first days of be- 
reavement, for the election of a new Apostle, in their 
first hour of exultation on the day of Pentecost, in 
the first brunt of persecution from the Jewish Sanhe- 
drin, Peter was to them indeed the Rock and Shepherd 
of the Church ^ Then, if in any time of his history, 
when they witnessed the thousands * upon thousands of 
his converts, they felt that it was the rolling back 
of the everlasting doors by him who had the keys 
of the kingdom of heaven ; when the magic arts of 
Simon quailed before him, when^ the four quaternions 
of Herod^s soldiers were unable to detain him in the 
guarded fortress, they felt that the embattled powers 
of evil were driven back before that power against 
which the gates of hell should not prevail. Or is it too 
much to infer, that when they saw the crowds ^ rush- 
ing into the city and laying their sick along the streets 
if so be that the shadow of Peter passing by might 



s Acts i. 15 ; ii. 14 ; iv. 8. » Acts viii. 18. ^ Acts v. 15, 16. 
^ Acts ii. 41 ; iv. 4. y Acts xii. 4, 10. 



n.] 



ST. PETEK. 



87 



overshadow some of them, — the awful ^ judgment upon 
falsehood in the death of Ananias, — the divine sanction 
of beneficence in the resurrection of Dorcas, — they felt 
that what Peter had bound on earth was indeed bound 
in heaven, that what Peter had loosed on earth was 
indeed loosed in heaven ? But as before, so now, there 
was yet a higher mission to discharge than to stand at 
the head of his brethren. He had been the first to 
recognise the manifestation of the Son ; he was now 
to be the first to receive the manifestation of the 
Spirit. It is true that as before he had been the 
fervent Galilean, so now he was the Apostle of the 
Circumcision^. Still in those appeals which swayed 
the hearts of thousands in the streets of Jerusalem, 
he takes his stand ^ on David's tomb — he welcomes 
the newest and latest of Grod's dispensations in^'' the 
language of the oldest of the prophets. Still he and 
his brother Apostles are to be found entering the 
Beautiful Gate of the temple, to join in its stated 
services ^ ; still at the close of day they may be seen 
lingering on its eastern ^ height in that ancient cloister 
which bore the name of Solomon. The worship of the 

^ Acts Y. 3, 5 ; ix. 36. » Gal. ii. 8. 

^ Acts ii. 29. *' His sepulclire is with us until this day." 
Acts ii. 16. " This is that which was spoken by the prophet 
" Joel." For the antiquity of the prophecy of Joel, see Ewald on 
the Prophets, i. 64. 

Acts iii. 1. "Peter and John went up together into the temple 
" at the ninth hour." The regular hours of prayer were the third, 
the sixth, and the ninth hours. Jos. Ant. iv. 4, 3. 

« Acts iii. 11 ; v. 12. Solomon's porch, or cloister, {(Tr6a,) as is 
well known, was so called from the fact that in it were preserved 
the few fragments that remained of the ancient Temple. — Joseph. 
Ant. XX. 9. 7. 



88 



ST. PETEE. 



[SEEiT. 



temple and tlie sjmagogue ^ still went side b}^ side with, 
the prayers, and the breaking of bread from house to 
house ; the Jewish ^ family life was the highest expres- 
sion of Christian unity, whether in the household of the 
great Apostle himself, where Abraham and Sarah. ^ 
were still the types of Christian marriage ; or in 
that sacred circle of the brethren, of our Lord, in 
whom with their wives ^ and children the apostolic 
age may have loved to trace the continued sanction 
of those domestic relations by which they were bound 
to our Lord Himself. The fulfilment of the ancient 
law was the aspect of Christianity to which the atten- 
tion of the Church was most directed, whether as set 
forth in the Divine code of Christian duty contained 
in the earliest and most purely Jewish of the Gospels, 
that according to St. Matthew, or in the earliest and 
most purely Jewish of the Epistles, the Epistle of 
James the Just, now beginning to take his place 

^ Acts ii. 46 ; compare the assembly {(Tvi^ayiayrjv) of Je\ri.sli Chris- 
tians in James ii. 2. 

s Kar' oIkov. Acts ii. -46 ; and compare the household of Mary, 
Acts xii. 12. 

^ 1 Pet. iii. 1. For Peter's own honsehold see Matt. viii. 14 ; 1 Cor. 
ix. 5 ; possibly 1 Pet. v. 13 ; and the tradition of his wife's matyi'dom 
in Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. p. 736. 

^ 1 Cor. ix. 5. " Have we not power to lead about a sister or a wife, 
"as weU as the other Apostles [ol Konrol), and as the brethren of the 
" Lord and Cephas." So the story of St. Jude's gi-andchildi-en, in 
Hegesippus apud Eus. H. E. ni. 20. From the passage above quoted 
from 1 Cor. ix. 5, it is obvious that as a general rule the original 
Jewish Apostles, as distinguished from the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
were married, and with this couicides the belief of the three first 
centmies, which maintained that St. John was the only exception. — 
See Cotel. ad Ign. Phil. 4. 



n.] 



ST. PETEE. 



89 



in the Divine economy as the type of all that 
strictly belonged to the primitive, original Israelite 
Christian j. 

But was this all ? Was Christianity to be no more 
than a perfected Judaism ? Was Peter to be no more 
than the founder of the Jerusalem Church ? Was 
this to be the final end of those lofty aspirations of the 
ancient prophets ; the adequate fulfilment of those 
parting words of his ascended Lord ? Was the exist- 
ing frame-work of the Christian society, which, bow- 
ever widely ramified, was still confined to that Hebrew 
race, and those Hebrew institutions that bore on their 
very front the marks of approaching dissolution — was 
this the Church against which the gates of death were 
never to prevail ? Were all those generations of the 
ancient ^ world who had lived before the law — all 
those countless hundreds of Gentile proselytes who 
even now were knocking for admittance at the gates 
of life — were all these, with all the heathen nations at 
their rear, to be for ever excluded from the kingdom 
of heaven? Such were the questionings which must 
have arisen in the mind of the great Apostle, when on 
the roof at Jafia, overlooking the waves of the western 
sea ^ — the sea of Greece and Korae — the sea of the isles 
of the Gentiles — he knelt in trance and prayer waiting 
for the answer to his thoughts. No, it could not be ; 
no, although he himself shall pass away before a new 
Apostle, greater even than himself; though the first 

j See the Sermon on St. James. 

^ See 1 Pet. iii. 18, which, however mterpreted, must imply refe- 
rence to the state of the primitive world. 

* See Christian Year, Monday in Easter Week. 



90 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. 



shall be last"^ and the last first ; thougli he has borne 
the scorching blast ^ of the rising sun, and the other 
has been called but at the eleventh hour — though all 
this take place, it must not be. What God hath 
cleansed °, that Peter must not call common or un- 
clean ; already the messengers of the Roman centurion 
are in the court below ; once more he is to wield the 
keys of life and death — once more to loose the Chris- 
tian Church for ever from that yoke p which neither he 
nor his fathers had been able to bear — once more, 
wider far than ever mortal hand had up to that mo- 
ment dared, to throw open the gates of heaven, even 
to the whole human race ; and then his work, his own 
especial work, as the first Apostle and the founder of 
the Church, was ended. 

III. The conversion of Cornelius is then the last 
recorded apostolical act of St. Peter — an act, in its 
lasting consequences, in its union at once and for 
ever of the Gentile with the Jewish world, worthy 
indeed to close the career of him whose characteristic 
it was, that with his thoughts ever bounded by time, 
his spirit was ever open to the first dawn of things 
eternal. Henceforth, for the long period of twenty 

™ Matt. xix. 3. The whole of this passage has long been used in 
the Church-services as the Gospel for the Feast of the Conversion 
of St.Patd. 

" rhv Kau(ru)i/a, Matt. XX, 12. That it means not the heat of the 
noonday sun, but the scorching wind of the desert at sunrise, apjDears 
from James i. 11 ; Jonah iv. 8 ; Matt. xiii. 6 ; see Trench's Parables, 
p. 169. 

° Acts X. 15, and compare Acts xv. 9, where the same word 
KaOaplcras is repeated, 
p Acts XV. 10. 



II.] 



ST. PETEE. 



91 



years, between his escape from Herod and his death, 
we derive our knowledge of his life only from such 
incidental allusions as occur in the Epistles, or from 
such uncertain light as can be gathered from eccle- 
siastical traditions. At Antioch^, at Corinth, and in 
the scene of his earlier history at Jerusalem, we trace 
for a moment his presence or his influence. We catch 
a glimpse of him with the partner of his labours, and 
his son^ Mark, far away in the distant east, by the 

1 For Antioch, see Gal. ii. 11 ; for Corinth, 1 Cor. i. 12, and com- 
pare 1 Cor. ix. 5 ; xv. 5, as indicating a certain authority in his name. 
For Jerusalem see Gal. ii. 9 ; Acts xv. 7. The connexion of St. Peter 
with Alexandria and Egypt, though asserted in some ancient tradi- 
tions, and some modern commentators, is too remote or too uncertain 
to be noticed here. 

1 Pet. V. 13. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that rj avvc- 
KXiKTi] is the wife of Peter, and if so that 6 vlos fxov is not meta- 
phorically (in which case t4kvou would be the natural word, as in 
1 Tim. i. 2) but literally '* his son." Whether the Babylon from the 
neighbourhood of which this epistle is dated be the city of Meso- 
potamia, or (as in Rev. xiv.) a metaphorical name for Rome, cannot 
perhaps be settled with certainty. On the one hand there is the 
natural inference that in the context such a metaphor would be out 
of place ; the fact that the Mesopotamian Babylon was, next to 
Jerusalem, the chief seat of the Hebrew Jews, and so the proper 
field of Peter's labours ; the indication (observed amongst others by 
Niebuhr) in 1 Pet. i. 1, that the countries are addressed not from 
west to east but from east to west. On the other hand is the frequent 
use of such metaphorical names in the Jewish phraseology of this 
period, and of this very name for Rome (Schottgen Hor. Heb., vol. i. 
1125) ; the calamities which had recently devastated the Babylonian 
provinces ; and the short interval which is left for the passage of 
St. Peter from Babylon to Rome, if we attach any credit to the 
common traditions of his martyrdom. Whatever can be said in 
favour of this second hypothesis is stated with great abiUty by 
Windischman in his VindiciaB Petrinae, (pp. 130 — 133,) and it is sup- 
ported by the few indications which remain to us from the three first 



92 



ST. PETER. 



[seem. 



waters of Babylon, amongst tlie descendants of those 
who long ago had hung their harps on the willows 
that are therein. And yet again, although here we 
are dependent solely on the wavering testimony of later 
ages, it may still be allowed to us to trace his foot- 
steps by the banks of the Tiber — to witness beside the 
Appian way the scene of the most beautiful of eccle- 
siastical legends % which records his last vision of his 
crucified Lord — to overlook from the supposed spot ^ 
of his death the city of the Seven hills, — to believe that 
his last remains repose under the glory of St. Peter^s 
dome^. Such uncertaioties are indeed of no moment 
to us, if the hour had indeed come when neither at 
" Jerusalem," nor Babylon, nor Rome, were men to 
worship the Father," but that everywhere, in the 
words ^ of St. Peter himself, he that feared God and 
" worked righteousness, would be accepted of Him;" 
and, however great the scope which the silence of 
Scripture on these points may leave for imagination or 

centuries, and in later times by the polemical interests both of Papal 
and Anti-papal controversialists. But on the whole there does not 
seem sufficient reason for abandoning the literal meaning of the pas- 
sage; see the commentaries of Steiger, (Eng. Tr., yoI. i. p. 30), and 
Mayerhoff, (p. 130,) ad Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. Appendix (ad 1 Cor. xvi.) 

s The Chapel, " Domine quo vadis," where St. Peter is said to have 
met our Lord when flying from the persecution of Nero, and in an- 
swer to his question, " Lord, whither goest Thou?" to have received 
the reply, " I come to Eome to be crucified afresh." On which the 
Apostle retm-ned to meet his fate. 

' The legend of St. Peter's crucifixion on the eminence of S. Pietro 
in Montorio on the Janiculum is very modern, 

" The Eoman tradition, as is well known, places some of the 
bones of St. Peter under the High Altar of the Basilica of S. Pietro 
in Vaticano. 

Acts X. 35 ; 1 John iv. 21. 



11.] 



ST. PETEE. 



93 



speculation, it certainly does not encourage u.s to dwell 
upon them either for historical information or moral 
instruction. One general fact, however, does emerge 
to us respecting him out of the general obscurity which 
is the true image of the close of his mortal life ; and 
which shews that though his own age was passed 
away, and the age of Paul had begun, there was still 
a work left, which then, and not before, Peter, and 
none but Peter, could perform y. Throughout the em- 
pire, in the capital and in the provinces, there existed 
a powerful body of Jewish descent, desperate enough 
to attempt, and numerous enough under an energetic 
leader to effect, any enterprize for the establishment 
of the kingdom of David upon the ruins of Rome. 
These were the men who, seeing in the intense excite- 
ment, and the vast energies of the first burst of Chris- 
tianity, a ready instrument for the prosecution of their 
own daring plans, would fain have identified them- 
selves with the early Church ; these were the men 
who became the rallying point for all those wild re- 
volutionary sects and superstitions which the heathen 
historians and statesmen confounded with the Divine 
system under which they tried to shelter themselves — 
these were the Judaizers who had long been at such 
deadly war with St. Paul, and who still hoped to make 
circumcision and the rites of the law essential, that 
they might turn the Gospel into a vast organization, 
distinguished by the political badge of Judaism, armed 
with the strength of a new faith, and unearthly origin, 
to rise against the weak and profligate princes who 
occupied the imperial throne. To one place and to 
y Essay on the Judaizers. 



94 



ST. PETER. 



[seem. 



one name tlie eyes of this great party were turned; 
that place was Jerusalem, and that name was Peter. 
If even in Corinth, the most exclusively gentile of all 
the early Churches, there was yet a faction which bore 
the name of Cephas^, we may well conceive, and 
St. Paul's Epistles sufficiently indicate, how studiously 
the Apostle of the Circumcision must have been put 
forward in opposition to the Apostle of the Gentiles in 
the Churches of Asia Minor, and above all in the 
Church of Galatia% where this party was entirely 
dominant ; and in the apocryphal acts and writings 
ascribed at a somewhat later date to St. Peter, we may 
still read the covert, but significant language which 
denounces " the hateful teaching of the enemy of the 
lawV 

Such was the host which might have been gathered 
round Peter as the Mahomet of a Christian Judaism* 
Such however was not, nor could be by any possibility, 
the career of any Apostle of Christ. It was now — 
if we may take the most probable conjecture as to the 
time and place of its composition — it was now that 
from the banks of the Euphrates there came that great 
Epistle addressed to all the Asiatic Churches, from 
the eastern hills of Pontus down to the cities on the 
Mgean sea. Its direct object seems to have been at 
once to strike, whether amongst the Jewish or Gentile 
portion of those communities, at the root of that 
counterfeit Christianity which would have made him 

* 1 Cor. i, 12 ; iii. 22 ; and implied in 1 Cor. ix. 5. 

* As implied in Gal. ii. 7, 8, 11, 14. 

^ See the Epistle of Peter to James (c. 2), prefixed to the Clemen- 
tines in Cotelerius' Patres ApostoKci, (vol. i. p. 602). See Essay on the 
Divisions of the Corinthian Church. 



n.] 



ST. PETEE. 



95 



its Apostle ; to conjure tKem, not once only, but re- 
peatedly, "to submit to every ordinance of men for 
the Lord's sake " to bave tbeir conversation bon- 
" est among the Gentiles ; " tbat " tbey sbould not 
" give occasion to evil speaking^." And bow nobly 
tbis object was answered, at least in one of tbe Cburcbes 
wbicb received tbe Epistle, is preserved to us in tbat 
only extant record of tbe early Bitbynian Cburcb, tbe 
letter of tbe younger Pliny. Tbere we see bow " by 
" tbeir well-doing tbey put to silence tbe ignorance of 
" foolisb men;" bow by tbeir universal practice "not 
" to be tbieves, or murderers, or evil-doers,^' tbey dis- 
armed tbe suspicions alike of tbe proconsul and of bis 
imperial master ^. 

But tbe indirect object and general character of tbe 
Epistle are still more significant. Tbere, at tbe close 
of bis life, be appears not glorying in bis early fame 
as leader of tbe first Apostles, not entrenching himself 
within tbe sphere of his natural Jewish prepossessions, 
but striving to merge his own individual character 
and existence in tbe career of him whom his own 
followers would fain represent as his rival and his 
enemy. We trace, indeed, the favourite recurrence to 
the images of tbe older world ^ ; tbe longings of tbe 
prophets ; tbe simplicity of patriarchal life ; the tra- 
ditions of the antediluvian epoch ; the strong resem- 
blance to the Epistle of St. James, no less than to bis 

1 Pet. ii. 12, 13 ; iv. 14. 

d 1 Pet. ii. 15 ; iv. 15. Comp. PUn. Ep. x. 97. Affirmabant .... 
quod essent soliti . . . . se obstringere . . . . ne furta, ne latrocinia, 
ne adnlteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati 
abnegarent. 

« 1 Pet. u. 23 ; i. 11 ; Hi. 5, 20. 



96 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. 



own early speeches in the Acts K But still its whole 
spirit and phraseology accords not with that of James or 
of John, but of Paul ; and coinciding as it does with 
the thoroughly Pauline character of his only recorded 
speech during this later period ^ ; coinciding lastly 
with the express assertion that the Epistle was sent 
by Paul's own companion Silvanus, and that it was to 
assure them that "this^/' the Gospel to which Paul 
had converted them, ^'was the true grace of God, 
wherein they stood V' it ma}^ well be taken as the 
pledge of the last work of St. Peter, in crushing abso- 
lutely and for ever this fatal schism which would have 
divided the two great Fathers of our faith — him who 
gave it its first outward form, and him who proclaimed 
its deep inward spirit. And it is pleasing to trace the 
traditionary^ confirmations of their unit}'— the unity 
which joins St. Peter to St. Paul, rather than to his 
own early friend St. John — in the testimony which 
the doubtful ^'Second Epistle of Peter tenders to 
" the wisdom of his beloved brother Paul — in the 
legends which represent them as joint rulers of Antioch, 
Corinth, and Rome — both confined in the same Mamer- 
tine dungeon — both receiving the crown of martyrdom 
on the same day — and in all the early works of Chris- 
tian art both ever exhibited side by side — the one with 
his inverted cross, the other with the executiouer^s 

f For the resemblances to the speeches in the Acts, see Hilde- 
brand's Commentary on the Acts, p. 571 — 574 ; for the resemblances 
to the Epistle of St. James see De Wette's Commentary on the 
Epistles of St. Peter, St. James, and St. Jude, p. 8. 

s Comp. especially Acts xv. 9, 11, with Eom. iii, 22, 24. 

^ 2 Pet. iii. 15. i 1 Pet. v. 12. 



n.] 



ST. PETER. 



97 



sword — ^' lovely and pleasant were they in their lives, 
" and in their deaths they were not divided 

ly. Such is the career of St. Peter, and such the 
fulfilment of the great prediction which must always 
stand at the head of his history. We cannot indeed 
realize it so vividly as those did who actually wit- 
nessed it ; but the lapse of eighteen centuries rather 
increases than diminishes our sense of its literal and 
perfect truth, whether we look at what it did or what 
it did not contain. Without Peter, humanly speaking, 
the infant Church must have perished in its cradle ; 
he it was who under Grod^s blessing caught ^ the truth 
which was to be the polar star of its future history — 
who guided it safely through the dangers of its first 
existence ; who then, when the time came for launch- 
ing it into a wider ocean, preserved it no less by his 
retirement from the helm which was destined for an- 
other hand. He was the Rock, not the builder of the 

^ These traditions are referred to not as in themselves a proof of 
the unity of the two Apostles, which is really found in the First Epi- 
stle of St. Peter, but merely as the prolonged echo of the belief of the 
early Church respecting it. Valueless as may be the historical tes- 
timony of each singly, yet collectively they are of some importance 
as expressing the consciousness of the third and fourth centuries that 
there had been an early contest, or at least contrast, between the 
two Apostles, which in the end was completely reconciled ; and it 
is this feeUng which gives a real interest to the outward forms in 
which it is brought before us, more or less indeed in all the south 
of Europe, but especially in Eome itself. It would be difficult to 
find in a few words a truer representation of their respective cha- 
racters and missions than is given in the two farewell addresses to 
each other inscribed over the small chapel which professes to be built 
on the scene of their final parting, immediately without the walls of 
the city. 

1 " The pilot of the Galilean lake." (Lycidas.) 

H 



98 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. 



Christian society — the Guardian of its gates, not the 
master of its innermost recesses — the Founder, as 
I have before expressed it, not the propagator, nor the 
finisher — the Moses of its exodus, not the David of its 
triumph, nor the Daniel of its latter days. 

And with him, by the very force of the terms, 
the purely personal and historical parts of our Lord's 
promise of necessity came to an end. Never again can 
Jewish zeal and Jewish forms so come into contact 
with the first beginnings of Christian faith — never 
again can mortal man find himself so standing on 
the junction of two dispensations — the Church once 
founded can have no second rock — the gates once 
opened can never again be closed — the sins which were 
then condemned, the virtues which were then blessed, 
the liberty which was then allowed, the licence which 
was then forbidden, whether by word or deed, of the 
first Apostle, were once for all bound or loosed in the 
courts of heaven, never again to be unbound or bound 
by any earthly power whatever. 

But there is a sense, and that of some practical 
importance, in which the example of Peter, like that 
of the other Apostles, lives and will live always. We 
know the feeling of suspicion, of contempt, of com- 
passion with which the world regards those labourers 
in a good cause, who whether in praise or blame are 
called " enthusiasts." We know how often this feeling 
is provoked or even deserved by the imperfections, the 
narrowness, the one-sided views with which such cha- 
racters are often marked, and how strong is the temp- 
tation to regard them, if not as absolutely mischievous, 
at least as useless or despicable. It is as a warning 



n.] 



ST. PETEE. 



99 



against such a feeling as this that the blessing on 
Peter becomes the expression of a universal law of the 
Providence of God. Most signally indeed was it shewn 
in the character of the first Apostle, that it was by no 
intellectual greatness or strength of mind that Chris- 
tianity was first communicated to man. Most remark- 
able is the proof afibrded of the Divine origin of our 
faith, when we contemplate the fact that he, who was 
undoubtedly its first human founder, cannot by the 
wildest licence of conjecture be imagined capable of 
conceiving or inventing it. To grant that Peter was 
the chief of the first Apostles is almost to acknow- 
ledge that the Apostles were, as they professed to be, 
the disciples of One infinitely above themselves. What 
is true however of Christianity in its first rise, is true 
also in a measure of all its subsequent exemplifications. 
Look at the history of any great movement for good 
in the world, and ask who took the first critical step in 
advance, whom it was that the wavering and undecided 
crowd chose to rally round as their leader and their 
champion ? and will not the answer always be as it 
was in the apostolical age — not the man of wide and 
comprehensive thought, nor of deep and fervent love, 
but the characters of simple unhesitating zeal which 
act instead of reflecting, which venture instead of cal- 
culating, which cannot or will not see the difl&culties 
with which the first struggle of an untried reformation 
is of necessity accompanied. They may be doomed, 
like Peter, to retire before the advancing tread of 
a new Apostle ; but it is not till their task is finished ; 
they may perish, but their cause survives ; they have 
been the pioneers in the great work which they them- 



100 



ST. PETER. 



[seem. 



selves but faintly and partially understood. And of 
such, whether in nations or individuals, the vrell- 
known. comment of Origen on the words of the text, 
echoed as it is"' with more or less distinctness by so 
many illustrious voices from Tertullian down to Leo, 
is no exaggeration of the truth — " He who has Peter's 
" faith is the Church's rock; he who has Peter's vir- 
" tues has Peter's keys.'' 

Doubtless there have been ages in which that spirit 
and those blessings have been especially exemplified. 
Such above all was the momentous epoch, when Chris- 
tianity may almost be said to have had a second be- 
ginning — when the northern nations rushed down 
upon the Roman empire and modern Europe came 
into existence. If ever there was a time which needed 
a second founder like Peter, it was the age of Clovis 
and of Gregory, of Charlemagne and of Innocent ; if 
ever a sphere destined for spirits who like him should 
be the Moses of the Christian Church, it was the age 
when the deeds of Joshua and Samson and Jephthah 
were acted over again in the enthusiasm of the first, 
and of the last, Crusaders ; if ever a period when, as in 
the age of the Apostle of the circumcision, the out- 
ward form of Judaism seemed necessary as the tempo- 
rary framework of the inward life, when the irregular 
impulses of a simple enthusiasm were made the means 
of preserving much that was holy and divine, it was 
the union of anarchy and superstition with heroic zeal 
and self-devotion which characterized the system of the 
Middle Ages. I am not saying that that system was 
a complete representation of St. Peter's character — it 
See the end ot the Essay on the Promises to Peter. 



II.] 



ST. PETBE. 



101 



doubtless was in many respects entirely dissimilar. 
But if there be any such general resemblance as has 
been stated, then, although not in the fabulous sense 
in which the bishops of E,ome are alleged to be the 
successors of St. Peter, we may gladly acknowledge 
that in the connexion which the great city of the 
Middle Ages sought to establish between itself and 
St. Peter, there was something more than the ground- 
less tradition of an imaginary see ; and even the most 
determined opponent to the revival of that medieval 
system may recognise the shadow of an undoubted 
truth, when in the most magnificent edifice ever yet 
consecrated to Christian worship, he reads the ma- 
jestic inscription traced in colossal characters round 
the cupola which overhangs the Apostle^s grave — Tu 
Es Petrus et super hang Petram ^dificabo Eccle- 
siAM Meam et tibi dabo Claves Regni Ccelorum. 

I have said thus much on the connexion of the 
spirit of Peter with the institutions and feelings of 
the Middle Ages, both because it helps us to appre- 
ciate them rightly, and also because it gives us the 
occasion for entering into the great historical associa- 
tions with which the name of St. Peter has been in- 
vested without involving ourselves in either side of 
the later controversies that have been built upon it. 

But there is a far more practical conviction to be 
enjoyed of the reality of that solemn promise ; there 
is a far higher sense in which, before Him who seeth 
not as man seeth, it is written in a temple not made 
with hands — even in the heart of every one in this 
congregation who after his measure walks in Peter's 
steps and abides in Peter's faith. The Middle Ages 



102 



ST. PETEE. 



have passed away; with them and their own especial 
institutions we have no longer any concern. But those 
moral and spiritual gifts, which they exhibited on so 
gigantic a scale, and in so exclusive a form, must still 
in some shape or other be capable of revival amongst 
ourselves. Peter was succeeded by Paul and by John, 
but his spirit was still continued though its form was 
wholly changed: Paul still retained the zeal of the 
Pharisee; the Beloved Disciple was also the Son of 
Thunder. Whatever else might be superadded, en- 
thusiasm was, and alwaj^s must be, the basis of the 
true apostolical character. And surely not least is this 
lesson needed in this place, where on the one hand the 
dawn of Christian life and manhood opening upon you, 
as upon St. Peter, at once requires and justifies the 
natural zeal of youth in behalf of what is pure and 
just and holy and true ; where on the other hand there 
is so much in the deadening influences of our own pe- 
culiar atmosphere to chill or to corrupt it. Think of 
the great works which still remain to be accomplished 
— of the great evils which still remain to be destroyed 
in this our age and country ; think of the vast capa- 
cities of moral improvement here, in which every one 
of you may bear his part above the slightest taint of 
controversy, above the slightest suspicion of presump- 
tion ; and then ask yourselves whether there is or is 
not need of zeal either in yourselves or in others ; 
whether there are not higher objects for it than those 
temporary or trivial or external subjects which now 
so often absorb it. You know what it is to be enthu- 
siastic in your tastes, in your opinions, yes, even in 
your amusements ; you surely must know, or can con- 



n.] 



ST. FETEE. 



103 



ceive, what it is to be enthusiastic purely for good and 
against evil. You must have felt yourselves, or you 
can at any rate imagine for others, the thrill, the ele- 
vation, communicated by even a single spark of true 
moral enthusiasm. Without doubt there is danger in 
zeal, or in the prejudice and narrowness with which 
it is often allied. But still the very point which I am 
urging, is that He, who out of the Jewish Simon raised 
up the Christian Peter, can out of these very weak- 
nesses, if only they be coupled with an honest and true 
heart, make His strength perfect ; that it is possible 
for us to be like the Galilean Apostle, without being 
like the Galilean zealot ; that it is possible to have 
the fervour of the Middle Ages without their forms or 
their fanaticism. It may be that from temperament 
or other causes we cannot be enthusiastic ourselves 
in behalf of what is good and great and holy ; but 
there is one thing which we can all do, and that 
is, to admire, or at least not to condemn, those who 
are. Such an one, whoever he may be, with what- 
ever slowness of intellect or plainness of speech, with 
whatever waywardness or eccentricity or false assump- 
tion, is to us the true representative of the first of the 
Apostles. To such at least the command is still in 
force " to strengthen their brethren,'* and woe be to 
us if by word or deed of ours we damp the fire of their 
ardour, or suffer our sense of difference of manner, or 
disposition, or intellect, to overpower our sense of the 
far greater cause which we have or ought to have in 
common with them ; if we refuse to acknowledge that 
the Spirit of Christ and of all goodness still breathes 
the spirit of power and of wisdom. Their judgment 



104 



ST. PETEE. 



[seem. n. 



may be weak, their opinions crude ; but if they bave 
the simple self-devotion of Peter, if tbey have at heart 
the thought of Grod and Christ and duty, not the 
thought of their own abilities, or interests, or amuse- 
ments, then, like Peter, they need not save to wash 
" their feet, and are clean every whit." There, amidst 
whatever defects, will be the Rock of the Church that 
is amongst us : wherever by their influence the path 
of duty is made more easy, the path of evil more diffi- 
cult and odious, there the gates of heaven are opened, 
the gates of hell are closed : whatever of playful sport 
or serious principle is by their presence and example 
sanctioned, that for all practical purposes is sanctioned 
to us in heaven : whatever lax notions of duty, or loose 
conversation, or vicious action, are by such an one con- 
demned, there, as far as human voice and countenance 
represent it to us, we may look for the condemnation 
of heaven. Let the world at large be distracted as it 
may, still for us, in our world here, in our work here, 
in proportion as we can dwell in the love and recol- 
lection of such characters amongst ourselves, we may 
rest assured that we are reposing under the shadow of 
St. Peter's throne, that we are holding communion 
with that Church against which the gates of hell shall 
not prevail. 



PREACHED IN THE EASTER TERM OF 1846. 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEK. 



A GENERAL view of the promises addressed to Peter in the 
Gospel narrative has been already given in the Sermon^ 
But the importance of these passages, both intrinsically and 
from the interest with which in some instances they have 
been invested by later controversy, may render it desirable 
to give here, once for all, such a detailed exposition of them, 
as the nature and limits of a spoken discourse necessarily 
precluded. 

They are contained in three of the four Gospels, Matt. xvi. 
17 — 19 ; John xxi. 15 — 19 ; Luke v. 10 ; xxii. 31, in which 
order it is now proposed to examine them, endeavouring in 
each case to discover the original intention with which they 
were originally recorded, and the precise meaning which the 
words originally bore. It will be seen that in so doing the 
results of the investigations on the subject have been given, 
without interrupting a disquisition in itself too long by re- 
futations of hostile, or quotations of favourable commentators, 
or by specifying in each particular case the obvious sources 
of German and English theology, from one or other of which 
have been for the most part derived the arguments or re- 
ferences which the following pages contain. 

I. The Promise to Peter m Matt. xvi. 13 — 19. 

"When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, 
He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I 
the Son of Man am ? And they said. Some say that Thou 
" art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, 
" or one of the prophets. He saith unto them. But whom 
say ye that I am ? And Simon Peter answered and said, 



106 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETER. 



" Thou, art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And 
" Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, 
" Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed 

it unto thee, but My Eather which is in heaven. And 

I also say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this 
" rock I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall 

not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the 
" keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou 

shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and 
" whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 

heaven." 

This passage forms part of a large section common to 
St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, (Matt. xvi. 13 — xvii. 
23; Mark viii. 27 — ix. 32; Luke ix. 18 — 45,) containing 
the account of the questions to the Apostles, the confession 
of Peter, the first announcement of the Passion, the Trans- 
figuration, and the healing of the demoniac child. 

In most parts of the record of our Lord's ministry, as pre- 
served in the three Gospels, it would be extremely rash to 
venture to pronounce on the exact time and place when the 
events may be supposed to have occurred. Whatever may 
have been the order of arrangement followed, the transposi- 
tions sufficiently prove that it could not have been that of 
an exact chronology. In this instance, however, an approxi- 
mation seems possible. It is an unusual mark of precision in 
the narrative, which we probably owe to a sense of the ex- 
treme importance of the event described, that the confession 
of Peter is said to have taken place not in the general neigh- 
bourhood of the sea of Galilee, but at a spot not elsewhere 
mentioned in the New Testament, and the northernmost point 
of the Gospel ministry, the remote city of Paneas ^, or Cae- 

* The only other connexion which this city has with our Lord's 
history is in the story of the statue there preserved of His heahng the 
woman with the issue of blood (Eus. H. E. vii. 18.) But the Gospels 
indisputably refer that event to Capernaum ; and for the general 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



107 



sarea Philippi. And combined with the fact of this retreat 
so far beyond the ordinary circle of our Lord's teaching, we 
are met for the first time by intimations of the impending 
sorrows of the Passion, remote indeed, but arresting our at- 
tention from the frequency and emphasis with which they 
recur. Had any change, unnoticed by the three Evangelists, 
come over the hitherto even tenor of the Lord's teaching ? 
Was there* any cloud passing over the heavens at this parti- 
cular juncture, of which this triple narrative has as it were 
unconsciously caught the shadow ? It is at least a remark- 
able coincidence that when we turn to St. John's Gospel, 
with which we are here for the only time during the whole 
of the synoptical account of our Lord's ministry brought into 
contact by the mention, immediately preceding, of the one 
miracle (that of the loaves) common to all the Four, we 
find that it is precisely this period which is there described 
as the crisis, the turning point (if we may so speak) of the 
earthly career of our Lord's life. From the time of the me- 
morable discourse recorded in the sixth chapter of St. John's 
Gospel, we are told that "many of His disciples went back 
and walked no more with Him;" even the Twelve seemed 
likely "to go away;" and Jesus could "no more walk in 
" Jewry (Judaea) because the Jews sought to kill Him^." 
The enthusiasm which up to that moment had drawn such 
multitudes after Him, now began to turn steadily against 
Him, until (with the exception of the temporary reaction on 
the resurrection of Lazarus) it closed in the Betrayal and 
Crucifixion. 

Such, if we may trust these indications, was the juncture 

improbabilities of the story in Eusebius, which may well be added to 
the instances given in the fiLrst Essay of this volume, see Jeremy 
Taylor's Life of Christ, Section xi. 20. 

John vi. 66; vii. 1. [This crisis is the basis of much inter- 
esting, though also much fanciful, argument in Kenan's Vie de Jesus^ 
c. 20.] 



108 



OKT THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



at which the confession of Peter took place. It fully agrees 
with the corresponding confession recorded in St. John (John 
vi. 68), supposing that we regard them as the same ; or, if we 
are to look upon them as distinct, though nearly cotempo- 
raneous, it would account for a reiterated requirement of that 
belief, which was now about to undergo such a severe and 
unprecedented trial. The time was now come when the 
mere feeling of personal attachment and national predilec- 
tion would be insufficient to secure the allegiance of the 
Apostles to their new Teacher ; if Christ was no more than 
a Jewish prophet, the course of events had now shewn that 
a Jewish prophet He was not ; if they were not prepared to 
receive Christianity, they could no longer conceal their dis- 
cipleship under the veil of Judaism. 

Whether, therefore, in answer to the question, " Whom 
say ye that I am?" or to that more touching address in 
St. John, ''Surely ye are not also bent on going away," 
(m?) /cat vjweis ^eXere uTrayeti/,) the impassioned exclamation of 
Peter is substantially the same, and equally significant. 
'' Thou iuv) art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
Thou and no other that is yet to come art,^ — not merely 
Jeremiah, or John the Baptist, mortal forerunners of the 
'' hope of Israel, but the anointed Messiah Himself — the 
'' Son or Likeness of God Himself, before the living power 
'* of whose manifestation all other manifestations are dead 
''and powerless." "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou 
" hast the words of eternal life." " What to us could the 
"world now be without Thee? Those words which are 
" indeed as Thou hast said, spirit and life, can be found 
" with Thee, and what else do we need?" "And there- 
" fore" (for so the speech of Peter continues in almost exact 
agreement with the earlier Gospels, St. John as usual having 
supplied the deep inward conviction and idea of that, of 
which they only give the outward expression) we {rjfie'is 
" Trema-TevKafiev) have believed and known that Thou art the 



OK THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



109 



Christ, the Holy One of God^" " We, whatever others 
may think, have long felt in our inmost hearts who and 
" what Thou art." It was not merely the outward belief 
in supernatural power, but the inward belief in that higher 
region, whither miracles point the way, though they can- 
not of themselves force an entrance. It was not merely the 
momentary impulse which caused them to leave all and fol- 
low Him, but the deliberate conviction that in Him they 
found all that their moral nature needed — that with Him was 
happiness and life, without Him, misery and death ^. 

Such a confession we may well conceive to have occupied 
that prominent place in the recollections of the early Chris- 
tian world which is implied in its position in all the four 
Gospels. They wished to know what was the first expres- 
sion of the feeling which possessed their own hearts and 
souls, and they found it here. But, unlike the confession 
itself, the blessing which follows upon it is contained in St. 
Matthew alone. It is by bearing in mind the probable cause 
of this that we shall best be able to enter into the true mean- 
ing of the words themselves, '^ow, whatever other uncer- 
tainty may hang over the nature and origin of the first Gos- 
pel, there is no reason to doubt that it was originally in- 
tended for Christians of Jewish descent, if not of the Syriac 
tongue. It was therefore with the peculiarities of this es- 
pecial portion of the Christian world that the peculiarities 
of this Gospel have been usually supposed to correspond ; 
and it is precisely what we might expect, that, whereas the 
most signal honour bestowed on St. Peter should have had no 
especial interest for the readers of the Gospel narrative gene- 
rally, it should have at once assumed the highest importance 
in that part of it which was intended for those amongst 
whom, as we know from the Acts, and the Epistles to Co- 

So Lachmann's text runs ; the remaining words of the received 
text being probably taken by the MSS. from Matt. xvi. 16. 
^ See Neander's Leben Jesu, p. 277, 448. 



110 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



rinth and Galatia, St. Peter was the chief authority. " Tell 
us®," they may well have said when they came to this 

point of the Gospel teaching, " tell us something of our 

" great Apostle : tell us not only what he said of his Master, 
but what his Master said of him — tell us what prophetic 
anticipations were uttered in this the crisis of his life con- 
cerning those mighty works which he has done and is doing 
amongst us — concerning those awful responsibilities which 
have been entrusted to him alone in his dealings with 
his Jewish and Gentile brethren?" And to this question 

the blessing on St. Peter in St. Matthew's Gospel was the 

answer. 

The J^ame of Petee. 

" Blessed art thou, Simon, Bar-Jonah, for it was not flesh 
and blood that revealed it to thee, but My Father who is 
" in heaven." "Blessed" (fiuKapios) — for a confession such 
as this implies that holy temper which is indeed blessed, 
(Matt. xi. 27; 1 Cor. xii. 3.) Simon, Bar -Jonah:' This 
is evidently the full designation of Peter by his original 
name and parentage, as if dwelling on the human and natural 
personality which was contrasted with the new and spiritual 
birth, implied in the new name of Cephas. Compare John i. 
42. " Por it was no human power " ( " flesh and blood," in the 
language of the New Testament, Gal. i. 16 ; Heb. ii. 14 ; 1 
Cor. XV. 50; Eph. vi. 12; John i. 13, as well as of the 
Kabbis (Lightfoot ad loc), is always used of human ^ nature 
in its outward and perishable aspect) " that in that confession 
unveiled {aiveKakv^e) to thee this great truth, but the power 
" of Him who sits enthroned above any human power or 
" influence whatever." [For the exact phrase compare the 

« For the gradual omission of the prominence of Peter from the 
cycle of the EvangeUcal teaching, see Herder on the Son of God, § 14. 

^ It was thus opposed to "hearts and reins," (the inward man.) 
See ZiOlig, on Eev. ii. 23. 



ON" THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



Ill 



similar expression in John vi. 44 ; and for the general con- 
trast between the divine inspiration of Peter and the Apostles 
on one hand, and the earthly fickleness of the Jews on the 
other hand, compare the corresponding passage of John vi. 
63, 65, 70. He might have confessed Jesus to be the Mes- 
siah on former occasions, but now first in the sight of Him 
who knew what was in man, his confession was the result 
of a purely heavenly influence, unmixed with any baser 
element.] 

" And /(fcaycb) say unto thee, thou {av) art Peter ;" " thou 
hast told Christ what He is, and now He tells thee what 
^' thou art. In token of that new spirit which in this the crisis 
" of thy life has come upon thee, it is declared to thee that 
''that new name, which expresses the rock-like firmness 
" of thy resolution, is now for the first time truly thine." 
[The difi'erent form of the giving of the name "thou art" 
here, and ''thou shalt be called" in John i. 42, of itself im- 
plies that the name had in some sense been given before ; 
and compare the exact analogy in Gen. xlix. 8: "Judah 
" (Praise) art thou, and thy brethren shall praise thee."] 
The giving of the new name to imply a new character, 
carries us back naturally to the instances of it in the cases of 
Abraham, Sarah, and Jacob ; where the change of appellation 
proceeds from God Himself. The name, as originally given 
in John i. 42, and if, as is most probable, the Syriac language 
was used, here also, was of course not Peter, but Cephas : and 
so far as we can trace its gradual assumption, it seems to 
have been as follows: — The name of Simon is still pre- 
served in most of our Lord's addresses to him in the Gospel 
history, Luke xxii. 31 (but not 34;) John xxi, 15 — 17; 
and in the Jewish Church it still appears in the speech of 
James at the council at Jerusalem, (Acts xv. 14). But the 
usual name by which he was known amongst the Jewish 
Christians, during the period of his chief influence, must 
have been Cephas, as appears from its being the only name 



112 



ON THE PHOirlSES TO PETER. 



by -which St. Paul calls him in the first Epistle to Corinth, 
and with one exception in that to Galatia. That g exception 
(Gal. ii. 8) seems to indicate the occasion of the first adoption 
of the Greek translation of Cephas in the word Petras or 
Peter. As Cephas ^ had been his name amongst the Hebrew 
Jews of Palestine, so ''Peter" seems to have been his desig- 
nation amongst the Hellenistic Jews of the dispersion; in 
which sense it is used, first, as has been said, in the allot- 
ment of the Church of the circumcision to him, as of the 
Gentiles to Paul in Gal. ii. 8, and then in 1 Pet. i. 1, and 
2 Pet. i. 1. "What principle guided the selection of one or 
other of the difi'erent names in the narrative, as distinct from 
the speeches, of the several Gospels, it is perhaps impossible 
to determine. "Peter" is the general name in St. Matthew ^ 
and St. Mark, (perhaps from the fact that these two Gos- 
pels were addressed to the Jewish Christians, with whom 
Cephas," or its corresponding phrase "Peter," was most 

s The true text, whilst it retains Uerpos in Gal. ii. 7, 8, in Gal. i. 18 ; 
ii. 9, 10, 14, giyes Krjcpas. 

^ For the general practice of changing the Jewish names in foreign 
countries see Ziillig on the Apocalypse, i. 301. Instances of its being 
effected by a slight alteration of the sound are "Jason" for "Jesus" 
or "Joshua," " Josippus" for "Joseph," " Alcimus" for " Jehoiakim," 
Mnaseas or "Mnasson" for " Manasseh," "Paul" for "Saul," " Ke- 
dron" for " Kidron," or by a translation, as in the case of Peter, "Di- 
dymus" for "Thomas," "Porphyrins" for "Malchus." Of the form 
" Cephas" instead of the Hebrew word " Zur," two traces only are to 
be found in the Old Testament, in Jer. iv. 29, Job xxx. 6, where it 
occurs in the plural " Cephim," and is translated "Kocks." The 
same form appears in the proper names " Caiaphas," the high-priest, 
and " Caipha" a village at the foot of Mount Carmel. 

' In the Syriac version of Philoxenus, " Petrus" is used throughout 
St. Mathew ; in the Peschito, " Cepho ;" in the ancient MS., now in 
the British Museum, " Simon," or " Simon Cepho." For this as 
weU as for all other information on the Syiiac versions I am enthely 
indebted to the kindness of Mi-, Cm'eton, of the British Museum, 
[afterwards Canon of Westminster] . 



OK THE PEOMISES TO PETER. 



113 



familiar,) " Simon" in St. Luke, " Simon Peter" in St John. 
Ultimately the name of Cephas became entirely extinct, and 
that of "Peter" (which apparently had not before existed as 
a proper name) took its place in the nomenclature of the 
Christian world. 

The Rock of the Chukch. 

And upon this rock I will build My Church^, and the 
gates of the grave (roC 'aSoO) shall not prevail against it." 
From the giving of the name we pass to the meaning which 
was involved in it. That it was in consequence of the confes- 
sion and in reference to it that the name was bestowed, thus 
agreeing with the probable origin of the only other surname 
bestowed in like manner on any of the Apostles, (compare 
Mark iii. 17, and Luke ix. 54,) there can be little doubt. But 
as the name of Cephas has regard not merely to this particular 
act, but (John i. 42) to the general character of which it was 
the expression, so it seems certain that the words themselves 
(eVi ravrfj TTtrpa), though occasioned by the confession, refer 
to Peter himself. The change of person "on this rock," instead 
of " upon thee^''^ is the natural result of the sudden transition 
from a direct ^ to a metaphorical address ; and is in exact ac- 
cordance with our Lord's manner on other occasions. He 
said not "Destroy Me" or "the temple of My Body," but 
" destroy this temple," (John ii. 19). The change of gender 
(from neVpos^ to Tlerpa) is the natural result of the change 

^ Compare the exactly similar transitions in G-en. xvii. 5 ; xxvii. 36 ; 
xxxii. 27, the " and " (teal) here being equivalent to the " for " in the 
Hebrew. 

1 An exact parallel to this transition may be seen in Eev. ii. 12, 
except that whereas here it is from the person to the metaphor, there 
it is from the metaphor to the person. " He shall be a, pillar, and on 
Mm I will write." 

In the Peschito and the ancient MS. before referred to it is 
" Cepho" in both cases, except that in the passage where it is used for 

I 



114 



OS THE TEOMISES TO PETEE. 



from a proper name to the word from which the proper name 
is derived. The French language alone, of all those into 
which the original has been translated, has been able entirely 
to preserve their identity. The Greek Uerpos, which for the 
sake of the masculine termination was necessarily used to 
express the name itself, was yet so rarely used in any other 
sense than a " sto7ie,^' that the exigency of tlie language re- 
quired an immediate return to the word Uerpa, which, as in 
Greek generally, so also in the l^ew Testament, is the almost 
invariable appellation of a rocL^^ To speak of any confes- 
sion or form of words, however sacred, as a foundation or 
rock, would be completely at variance with the living repre- 
sentation of the l^ew Testament. It is not any doctrine con- 
cerning Christ, but Christ Simself, that is spoken of, as be- 
ing in the highest and strictest sense the foundation of the 
Church, (1 Cor. iii. 11,) and so whenever the same figure is 
used to express the lower and earthly instruments of the 
establishment of God's kingdom, it is not any teaching or 
system that is meant, but living human persons. Thus the 
Apostles are all of them called "foundations" of the Church 
in Eph. ii. 20; Rev. xxi. 14; and, by a nearly similar meta- 
phor, Peter, James, and John, are called ''pillars," (Gal. ii. 
9.) the faithful Christian a "pillar in the temple of God," 
(Eev. iii. 12,) and Timotheus, by a union of both metaphors, 
" the pillar and ground [or foundation (eSpaioj/za)] of the 
" truth in the house of God." (1 Tim. iii. 15 ^) 

this rock the feminine pronoun is added. In the Philoxenus version 
it is, " Thou art Petras, and on this ' shuo' I vrill build," d'C. " Cepho" 
appears properly to mean a stone {xlQos), but from the poverty of the 
Syi'iac to be also used for a rock. In the Peschito of Matt, xxvii. 60, 
it is used in the same verse both for xidos and Trerpa. The few in- 
stances of irerpos for a " rock " (Soph. (Ed. Tyr. 334 ; Callim. Ap. 22, 
see Bloomfield, ad 1.) are merely exceptions proving the rule; and in 
tbe New Testament TreVpa is invariable. Comp. especially Matt. vii. 
24, 25. 

° The above interpretation of a somewhat disputed passage may 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETER. 



115 



To return to the particular application of this metaphor to 
Peter, it is necessary to conceive rightly the whole image 
of which it forms a part, and to draw out the several trains 
of latent association which its connexion with the whole 
tissue of Scripture imagery almost necessarily involves. The 
Church or assembly of God's people, is represented as a 

need a few words of explanation. Tlie sense of the whole context is 
as follows : " That thou mightest know how to walk in the house of 
" God, (and by the house of God I mean no literal temple of dead 
" stones, but the congregation of the living God,) in which thy true 
'* position is to be a piUar and foundation of the truth ; which truth 
" is the mystery of godliness," &c. : the words, "which is the Church 
" of the living God," being inserted as a parenthesis to explain the 
previous metaphor. The common interpretation which makes '* the 
" Church" to be the " pillar," would not indeed involve in it any dis- 
putable conclusions, as it is obvious that "the Church " here, as else- 
where, means the whole assembly of Christians as distinct from its 
officers or ministers, and also that it is spoken of in its ideal rather 
than in its actual condition. But it is evidently against the whole tenor 
of the passage to describe the same object first as a building and then 
as a part of that building ; and the invariable application of the figure 
of a pillar to individuals rather than to abstractions, is further con- 
firmed by the fact that in the very first quotation of these words by 
any subsequent writers they are so appUed: in the Epistle of the 
Church of Lyon, c. 5. (a.d. 177), Attains the martyr is expressly called 
the pillar and foundation of all in that place, {<TTi\os koI iSpaiw/xa 
Toov ivravda &€t -y^yovuToou). Compare also the similar passages in 
Clem. Eom. 5 ; Ign. Phil. 6. St. John is called 6 arvKos in Chryso- 
stom, (Hom. Joan. i. 1.) 

o This passage and Matt, xviii. 17, (" Tell it unto the Church,") 
are the only texts in the Gospels where the word occurs. In both 
these places the word seems to be used in strict accordance with 
its original and proper meaning. In the passage before us, as in 
that just quoted from 1 Tim. iii. 15, it expresses that the structure 
to be reared on the rock is no dead structure of wood and stone, 
but a vast congregation of living human souls. In Matt, xviii, 17, it 
expresses that if the offender will not listen to the remonstrance of 
individuals, he is to be brought before the whole body of believers, 
that body of which it is afterwards said, "where two or three are 
it gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." 



116 



Oir THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



house ; not a temple so much as a beleaguered fortress, ac- 
cording to the figure frequently used by the prophets im- 
mediately before the captivity, and naturally suggested by 
the actual P position of the palace and temple of Jerusalem 
on their impregnable hills. But this assembly or congre- 
gation, which up to this time had been understood only af 
the Jewish people, is here described as being built afresh ; 
"built," according to the significant meaning of that word, 
which, both in the Old and Kew Testament, always in- 
Tolves the idea of "progress, creation, expansion," — by Him 
who here, as so often elsewhere, appropriates to Himself 
what had up to that time been regarded as the incommu- 
nicable attribute of the Loes of Hosts. It is of this for- 
tress, this " spiritual house," to use the phrase in his own 
Epistle, (1 Pet. ii. 5,) that Peter is to be the foundation- 
rock. It was no longer to be reared on the literal rock of Zion, 
but on a living man, and that man not the high-priest of 
Jerusalem, but a despised fisherman of Galilee. He, who 
had stepped forward with his great confession in this crisis, 
had shewn that he was indeed well fitted to become the stay 
and support of a congregation no less holy than that which 
had been with Moses in the wilderness, or with Solomon in 
the temple. And against this new theocracy — not merely in 
itself, (for then there would be no purpose in mentioning it 
here,) but as so founded and supported i — it is declared not 
as a mere abstract statement of general truth, but as a pro- 
mise of present comfort in an approaching conflict, — that 
"the gates of the grave shall not prevail." The same image 

P Compare the expression " Obliam" or " Ophliam," as appHed to 
St. James, the " Ophel " or "bulwark" of the people, Ophel being 
actually the name of the ascent or " clivus " to the eastern side of 
Mount Zion. See the Sermon on St. James. 

1 /car' avTTis must refer (according to the usual interpretation) 
not to TreVpo but iKKXf}(jia. Still it is to the Church as founded on 
the rock. The phrase would not be left thus ambiguous if a more 
general meaning was intended. 



m THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



117 



h still continued ; on the one side is the divine citadel, seated 
aloft on its unshakon rock ; on the other like the dark 
shadow of the valley of Gehenna, under the precipice of Zion, 
yawn the gates of that black abyss where the powers of death 
and destruction sat enthroned against the fortress above. It 
is one of those frequent expressions found from time to time 
in the Scriptures, and suggesting to the oriental hearer, in 
two words, a whole world of imagery, which, to a modem 
reader, needs to be unfolded in a painful and detailed expo- 
sition. The figure, it will be observed, is derived from the 
oriental sieges, where the kings sat round about the be- 
leaguered city, (Jer. i. 15,) only that here the adverse powers 
are more immediately confronted by the mention not merely 
of the camp, but of the very gates themselves of the enemy, 
which, according to the eastern custom, so often alluded to 
in the Old Testament, and still preserved in the name of the 
Sublime Porte of the Turkish empire % represented the power 
and greatness which in early times took its seat in them, 
as in later times in the Eorum, the Senate-house, or the 
Throne. 

And further, these gates are the "gates of the grave," an 
expression which belongs to the whole Hebrew conception 
of Hades, Sheol, or ''the unseen* world" of death, which in 
the English version is usually rendered by the translation, 

* Thus in the Apocalyptic representation of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
the lake of fire (uniting the images of the Dead Sea and the valley of 
Hinnom) is brought close under its walls. See Ziillig, p. 387. 

Such too are the vestiges of the practice still preserved in Europe 
— the Gate of Lions at Mycen£e, where the kings of the patriarchal 
age of Greece sat in judgment before the palace, and the Gate of Jus- 
tice at the Alhambra, which receives its name from having been in 
hke manner the seat of the Moorish kings in that last western strong- 
hold of oriental customs, and where the passage of the text is also re- 
called by the figure of the " key," which, in common with many other 
Moorish fortresses, it presents engraven on its archway. 



118 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEB. 



true etyraologically, but conyeying a false impression theo- 
logically, of "hell." Here, as elsewhere, it is represented to 
the outward sense as the dark palace of death — hewn, like 
the sepulchral caves of the east, in the depths of the earth, 
(see Lowth's well-known comment on Isa, xiv. 15,) and 
guarded like an impregnable fortress, (Isa. xxxviii. 10). 
And here too, though from the frequent blending of the 
two together, the thought of evil seems to be implied in 
the thought of destruction, yet the idea of Destruction is pre- 
dominant — of Destruction, whether it be merely the region of 
Destruction that is spoken of, or whether, as in the bolder 
imagery of the Apocalypse, (Eev. i. 18; vi. 8,) it is con- 
ceived as the King of the unseen world* sitting to receive 
the prey which Death {davaros) brings to him from the world 
above. Whichever it be, the promise is clear, that vehement 
as may be the struggle for its very existence which the early 
Church will have to maintain, yet such will be the strength 
of Peter, that through Christ's blessing it will survive the 
shock triumphantly. 

The Keys op the Kingdom of Heaven. 

^'And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven." The idea which was placed before us in the 
preceding words now expands into a wider and higher 
range: from the earthly and outward ''congregation" or 
" Church" of God's people waging an outward warfare with 
earthly danger, we pass to that inward and heavenly aspect 
of it — that Church as it were within a Church — where the 
visible and invisible are blended into one, and which in 
the New Testament is represented to us in the expression, 
" the kingdom of God" or "of heaven." 

And with the change of idea the imagery changes also, 
yet so as naturally to grow out of that first presented to us. 

t See ZiiUig on Kev. i. 18. 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 



119 



It is still a fortress or building, but it would seem as though 
the gates of the dark valley had suggested the correlative 
idea of those ''everlasting gates" of Zion'' which had lift 
up their heads of old on the overhanging mountain — as 
though the gates of the deep abyss had called into more 
immediate view the corresponding image of the gates of the 
highest heaven, of which those earthly gates were the na 
tural and fitting symbol. It is not now so much the strug- 
gle for life or death which is set before us as the final 
triumph; and accordingly the great Apostle now appears 
no longer as the mute Eock on which the city leaned for 
support, but as the keeper of the Keys which are to repel 
or to admit the suppliant captive or triumphal procession 
that seek to enter the walls of the victorious people. The 
august associations which have been just alluded to as be- 
longing to the eastern idea of the '' gates," in part belonged 
also to the keys. It is mentioned as the highest reward of 
Eliakim, that ''the key of the house ^ of David should be 
" laid upon his shoulder, and he shall open and none shall 
" shut; and he shall shut and none shall open." And the 
same expression is in the Revelations (Rev. viii. 7) transferred 
to our Lord, in a passage strikingly illustrative of the words 
before us, because, like them, it contains the same implied 
contrast between the keys of heaven and the keys of Death 
and Hades, which had in one of the chapters immediately 
preceding (Rev. i. 18) been spoken of as wrested from their 
owners and given to Him who was dead and is alive for 
evermore. " These things saith He that is holy. He that is 
" true, He that hath the Key of David, He that openeth, and 
" no man shutteth ; and shutteth, and no man openeth." 
And as the Rock, which in the highest sense could only be 
predicated of Christ, was yet in a lower and sufficient sense 
predicated of Peter, so the power over the Keys, which 



" See Ewald on Ps. xxiv. 



* Isa. xxii. 22. 



120 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



admitted men into the innermost sanctuary and citadel of 
heaven, was indeed in the highest sense to be wielded hy 
none but the Holy and the True, yet in the lower sense might 
be enjoyed, like all other attributes of our Lord, by all His 
servants : and by whom so fitly as by that Apostle whose 
insight into heavenly things had been so critically shewn on 
the present occasion ? 

[That the meaning above given to the "keys" of Peter is 
correct, will appear still more clearly by reference to the 
other passages in the Kew Testament, where- the same me- 
taphor is used. (1.) In that just quoted from Eev. iii. 7, 
the natural meaning o-f the "house of Bavid" is evidently 
merged in that of the temple ; and the sense of the whole 
passage will be, " To Christ, as High-Priest, (compare Eev. i. 
18,) is given the right of entrance into the Haly of Holies; 
and that right He also gives to all His true followers ; they 
shall he kings and priests like Him." (compare Kev. iii. 12 ; 
i. 6.) And such is obviously the meaning,, more generally 
expressed, " I am the door of the sheep.'* (John x. 7.) 
(2.) In Acts xiv. 27 it is used with express reference to the 
event in Peter's life which, as will appear, was the chief ful- 
filment of this especial promise. " They rehearsed how God 
" had opened the door of the faith to the Gentiles.'" (3.) In 
St. Paul's Epistles, (1 Cor. xvi. 9; "a great door and ^Weo,- 

tual is opened unto me 2 Cor. ii. 12 ; "a door was opened 
" unto me of the Lord:" Col. iv. 3, "a door of utterance,") 
it is applied more generally to the giving or withholding op- 
portunities of usefulness to the Apostle, but still, so far as 
it goes, confirming, rather than contradicting, the explana- 
tion of the text in St. Matthew.^ 

The Binding and Loosing. 

" And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound 
" in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEK. 



121 



be loosed in heaven." One remarkable characteristic of 
this whole passage is the consecutiveness with which one 
image rises out of another. It is impossible to mistake the 
parallel between the words whatsoever thou shalt bind," 
&c., and those which form the close of the passage just 
quoted from Isa. xxii. 22, "he shall shut and none shall 
" open," &c. ; and the point of transition from one idea to 
the other is naturally afforded in the ancient^ practice of 
fastening gates not by locks, but by cords. 

Still it is clear that a new idea is introduced ; however 
naturally the notion of opening and shutting'* shades off 
into that of ''binding and loosing," it is obvious that the 
less familiar expression would not have been substituted for 
the more familiar without some specific reason, which reason 
is in this case supplied by the well-known meaning of the 
words themselves. The figure of ''binding and loosing," for 
" allowing as lawful, or forbidding as unlawful," is so simple 
and obvious that no language has been wholly without it ; 
"Set," "religio," "obligation," "a man is hound to do his 
" duty," are all familiar instances; but in the Jewish litera- 
ture of our Lord's time it was more than this ; the examples 
given by Lightfoot of the use of these words in this sense, 
being, as he says, selected out of thousands, incontestably 
prove not only that these words might have had this mean- 
ing, but that in the minds of those who heard them they 
could have had no other. Twice besides the expression is 
used; (Matt, xviii. 18;) "Verily I say unto you, "Whatso- 
" ever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: 
" and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in 
"heaven." (John xx. 23;) "Whose soever sins ye remit, 

^ For the keys of the ancients, and the use of coids, compare the 
works quoted in Kosenmiiller ad h. 1, who mentions especially a pic- 
ture (in Mich. Angel. Causseum. in Simulacris Deorum. Fab. xv. Tom. 
V. Ant. Kom. p. 776,) of a woman holding a key in her right hand, 
and in her left a cord. 



122 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 



^' they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye 
" retain, they are retained," to others besides St. Peter, and 
on each occasion the sense is substantially the same. " So 
" great shall be the authority of your decisions, that unlike 
those of the ordinary schools or rabbis, whatsoever you 
shall declare lawful shall be held lawful, whatsoever you 
shall declare unlawful shall be held unlawful, in the 
highest tribunal in heaven." It is, as it were, the solemn 
inauguration of the right of the Christian's conscience to 
judge with a discernment of good and evil, to which up to 
this time the world had seen no parallel. **If the house be 
worthy, let your peace come unto it, but if it be not wor- 
thy, let it return to you," (Matt. x. 13.) "It is not ye 
that speak, but the Spirit of My Father which speaketh 
in you," (x. 20.) " He that is spiritual judgeth all things," 
(1 Cor. ii. 15.) "He that despiseth [i.e. thinks lightly of 
^* the evil of sensuality] despiseth not man but God, who 
" hath also given to us [or you] His Holy Spirit," (1 Thess. 
iv. 8.) Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye 
know all things, and ye need not that any man teach you," 
(1 John ii. 20, 27.) " If we judged ourselves, we should not 
have been judged," (1 Cor. xi. 31.) These are some out 
of the many instances in which the same truth without the 
metaphor is expressed as belonging to the disciples of the 
first age of Christianity. In that age, when the foundations 
of all ancient belief were shaken, when acts which up to 
that time had been regarded as lawful or praiseworthy were 
now condemned as sinful, or which before had been regarded 
as sinful were now enjoined as just and holy, it was no 
slight comfort to have it declaied by the One authority 
which all Christians acknowledged as divine, that there were 
those living on the earth on whose judgment in these dis- 
puted matters the Church might rely with implicit confi- 
dence. In the highest sense of all doubtless this judgment 
was exercised by Him alone who taught as one having au- 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



123 



thority and not as the scribes, and who on the Mount of the 
new law drew the line between His own commandments and 
what was said by them of old time. In a lower sense, it 
was exercised and has ever since been exercised, by all those 
who by their teaching or their lives, by their words or their 
examples, have impressed the world more deeply with a sense 
of what is Christian holiness and what is Christian liberty. 
In an intermediate sense, it has been exercised by those 
whose especial gifts or opportunities have made them in a 
more than ordinary degree the oracles and lawgivers of the 
moral and spiritual society in which they have been placed. 
Such above all were the Apostles. By their own lives and 
teaching, by their divinely sanctioned judgments on indivi- 
dual cases, (as St. Paul on Elymas or the incestuous Co- 
rinthian,) or on general principles, (as in their Epistles,) 
they have in a far higher sense than any other human be- 
ings, bound and loosed the consciences, i emitted and retained 
the sins, of the whole human race for ever. Whatever in 
short was the gift in them, which first in the early Church, 
and then in all future times, has invested their words and 
acts with a sacredness and authority accorded to no other 
acts or words of men, that was the realization to them of 
this august promise, now addressed especially and first to 
Peter, who amidst the general panic stood forward to avow 
his belief in the divinity of the cause which many others 
deserted, and who might therefore well be named not as the 
only one, but as the first, whose judgments should be proved 
by the most infallible signs to be not human but divine. 

Every part of this remarkable passage as so explained, now 
stands in complete harmony with itself. First, the blessing, 
followed by the declaration that the confession which had 
called it forth was no transient emotion, but the work of 
God Himself ; then the announcement, that he who had ut- 
tered the confession had proved himself to be indeed the 
foundation-rock of the new spiritual edifice, followed by the 



124 



017 THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



declaration tliat the edifice so founded was no perishable 
structure, but instinct with immortal life: lastly the pro- 
mise, that of that edifice Peter should command the entrance, 
followed by the declaration that his judgments there pro- 
nounced should not pass 'away like those of the Jewish Rab- 
bis with the fleeting opinion of successive schools, but should, 
like those of his brother Apostles, be ratified for ever in 
heaven. 

It only remains for us to enquire what was the fulfilment 
of the promise in Peter's subsequent history. In proportion 
indeed as we believe it to partake of the character of a Di- 
vine prophecy, we should shrink from marring its effect by 
an endeavour to fix down each word to any particular fact, 
and for this reason it has been thought best to explain its 
general meaning before attempting to descend into any mi- 
nuter application of it to details. Prophecy, it has been 
well said is not anticipated history so much, as an enuncia- 
tion of those eternal principles by which history is deter- 
mined, and accordingly neither here nor in the prophets of 
the Old Testament, are we justified in demanding such a 
literal anticipation of every detail as would leave no room 
for the free play of human agency and subordinate circum- 
stances. If the general effects of the Apostle's character, 
and of characters like his in after ages, has corresponded to 
the language here used, the essential and eternal value of 
this promise has been sufficiently vindicated. Still it has 
been so ordered, that, as in the prophecies generally, so 
here, the salient points, so to speak, of the history and the 
prophecy, shall to such an extent coincide, that whilst the 
Divine wisdom of the prophecy speaks for itself, our atten- 
tion is fixed on its Divine power by the history. Its true 
spiritual import stretches into the remotest future, but its 
first historical fulfilment is to be found in the life of Peter. 
It is needless to repeat what has been already said on this 
point at sufficient length in the Sermon, especially as it 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



125 



would also in part anticipate what is yet to come in the ex- 
position of the remaining passages. Yet it may not be irre- 
levant to justify more at length than was there possible the 
great importance attached to Peter's acts, and their conse- 
quent correspondence with the greatness of the promise. 

In the first place, we must recollect the extremely scanty 
materials from which our knowledge of Peter's life is de- 
rived. The ten first chapters of the Acts comprise it all, 
"Where so much is left untold, it is probable that what is 
told has been preserved and recorded from the deep impres- 
sion which it had made on those amongst whom it occurred, 
and which it was intended to make on those who were to 
read of it. Had there been a hundred speeches handed down 
of the different Apostles during the first years of their resi- 
dence at Jerusalem, the two speeches of Peter which remain 
to us might have been comparatively insignificant. But when 
these two alone are preserved, it is evident that the very fact 
of their preservation is a guarantee of their great importance. 
What is not told becomes to us more expressive than what 
is told. 

Accordingly, though it would be rash to say that either 
the history or the prophecy were recorded one for the sake 
of the other, it certainly does seem as if it was the same 
prominence which occasioned the selection of the general 
traits of St. Peter's character in the one, and the selection 
of the particular facts of his life in the other. When, for 
example, we reflect on the dangers to which the first disci- 
ples were exposed during the first days or months succeeding 
to the Ascension, it surely was most natural that in the one 
man who then stood at their head, and by whose preaching 
took place the first great increase of their numbers, which in 
fact converted them from an insignificant handful of indi- 
viduals into a formidable and extensive society, they should 
realize the image of the foundation-rock, and in his wonder- 
ful escapes from death and imprisonment should acknowledge 



126 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



the "baffled attempts of the powers of the grave to destroy 
him. Or again, if ever there was a time when the keys of 
heaven might be said to be wielded with more than ordinary 
sway, it was in the crisis which has been described in the 
Sermon as taking place at the conversion of Cornelius, i^o- 
thing but our own complete acquiescence in what then seemed 
the most startling of paradoxes could blind our eyes to the 
immense importance which that journey from Joppa to Cse- 
sarea must have assumed at the time, and the greatness of the 
consequences which it involved for all future generations. 

And lastly, if there could be any doubt as to the correct- 
ness of the view above given of the power of " binding and 
loosing," and the reality or significance of such a gift in 
the early Church, nothing could so effectually dispel it as 
a view of the unquestioned exercise of it by St. Peter, as re- 
corded in the Acts. "Let your yea be yea, and your nay, 
nayy," was the injunction to strict veracity put forward 
as we know on the very front of the earliest Christian 
Church at Jerusalem as a mark of the new society, and the 
more remarkable from its collision with the besetting sin of 
all the nations of the east. What more terrible proof could 
be given that what the Apostles had thus bound on earth 
was bound in heaven than in the death of Ananias and Sap- 
phira at the word of St. Peter? "The pure and undefiied 
" service of God^," such was another maxim now asserted 
in the Churches of Judaea, "is to visit the fatherless and 
"the widows, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." 
What more consoling proof could be given to the outward 
senses that this was truly the service which God approved, 
than when Peter raised from the bed of death, "the woman 
" who was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did," 
and over whose body " all the widows stood weeping, shew- 
" ing the coats and garments which Dorcas had made when 



y James v. 12. 



' Ibid. i. 27. 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEK. 



127 



" she was with them^?" And if from the peculiar failings 
or excellencies of the Church of Palestine, we ascend to the 
record of the more general questions which agitated the 
Church at large, it is still no exaggeration to say that here 
also the "binding and loosing" of the Christian conscience 
which was doubtless exercised in a measure, and subse- 
quently perhaps in a greater measure, by the other Apostles, 
was in the first instance exercised pre-eminently by St. Peter. 
In the great dispute which was, so to say, the source of all 
the casuistry of the first period of the apostolical age, it was 
Peter whose decision on the lawfulness of associating with 
Gentiles both at the conversion of Cornelius and in the as- 
sembly at Jerusalem was confirmed by the descent of the 
Spirit, and the whole subsequent order of Providence ^. In 
the daring attempt of the second period of the earliest here- 
sies to claim the sanction of Christianity for their own wild 
and revolutionary doctrines, it was Peter ^ whose decision on 
the unlawfulness of " using the liberty of Christians for 
" a cloak of maliciousness," was, as has been in part shewn 
already and will be more fully shewn hereafter, the chief 
human instrument of their overthrow. 



II. The Promises to Petek in John xxi. 15—23. 

The difficulties of the passage which has just been dis- 
cussed arise in great measure from the strongly prophetic 
and Hebrew character of its expressions ; but its general 
import could never have occasioned so much dispute if it 
had been measured by the more simple language of the 
passages in the two remaining Gospels, which treat of the 
same subject, and which, though touching upon it only 
incidentally, are in one respect doubly valuable on that 
account, because they afi'ord a remarkable proof that the 



» Acts ix. 36, 39. ^ Ibid. x. 45 ; xv. 28. 

1 Pet. ii. 16. 



128 



ON" THE PROMISES TO PETER, 



record of the promise in St. Matthew cannot be ascribed 
merely to the reverence of the Palestine Church for its great 
Apostle, but that it agrees substantially with other speeches 
of our Lord, for the preserTation or invention of which there 
existed no similar motive. 

"We now pass to that contained in John xxi. 15 — 23. 
" Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
thou Me more than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, 
Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto 
him, Feed My lambs. He saith to him again the second 
*Hime, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? He saith 
unto Him, Tea, Lord ; Thou knowest that I love Thee. 
^' He saith unto him, Peed My sheep. He saith unto him 
*^ the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? 

Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third 
^' time, Lovest thou Me? And he said unto Him, Lord, 
Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest that I love Thee. 
^' Jesus saith unto him. Feed My sheep. Verily, verily, I 
^' say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdest thy- 
self, and walkest whither thou wouldest : but when thou 
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and 
another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou 
" wouldest not. This spake He, signifying by what death 
he should glorify God. And when He had spoken this. 
He saith unto him, Polio w Me. - Then Peter, turning 
about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following ; 
" which also leaned on His breast at supper, and said. Lord, 
" which is he that betrayeth Thee ? Peter seeing him saith 
to Jesus, Lord, and M^hat shall this man do? Jesus saith 
unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that 
" to thee ? follow thou Me. Then went this saying abroad 
among the brethren, that that disciple should not die : yet 
Jesus said uot unto him. He shall not die ; but, If I will 
that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? " 



ON" THE PEOMISES TO PETER. 



129 



The chapter in which these words occur, occupies, as is 
well known, a remarkable position in St. John's Gospel. 
That it is an appendix, so to speak, to the general narra- 
tive, which had already been closed with the solemn scene 
of the confession of Thomas, can hardly be doubted; and 
there are not wanting indications that the actual composi- 
tion is by another hand than that of the Evangelist him- 
self^. But these difficulties in the outward details of this 
chapter are not incompatible with the belief that we have, 
what were believed to be the last recollections of the be- 
loved Disciple ; written, as they themselves intimate, after 
his death by the Ephesian disciples, but still in spirit and 
substance the same as the previous narrative. 

There can be little doubt that the immediate object of re- 
cording the scene must have been the contradiction of the 
expectation of St. John's immortality. With this it closes ; 
to this it tends throughout; and on this the chief stress is 
laid by the writer. But it would almost seem as if in the 
statement of the real saying of our Lord, on which the false 
rumour had been founded, the whole scene had come back 
so vividly to the mind of the writer — not merely the Divine 
prediction, but also his own early companions, employments, 
and haunts — that either he delighted to record, or the en- 
quiring disciples would not pause in their questions till they 
had received, the whole account even down to the minutest 
outward details elsewhere so unusual in St. John's Gospel, 
and especially those which related to that early friend of 
their own beloved teacher, the ancient Apostle of a bygone 
age, of whose latter days and dreadful death the recollection 
was still fresh in the minds even of the eastern Christians. 

^ See Lucke's Commentary on John xxi. 

® If we admit some sucb explanation as is here given of the minute- 
ness of the details, it obviates the necessity of introducing into the 
narrative a lengthened allegory, such as that adopted by St. Augus- 
tine, wholly uncongenial to the usual spirit of St. John's Gospel. 

K 



130 



OJT THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



And thus were touched so many chords of the earlier narra- 
tive of the Gospel history, — the names of the five disciples, 
the miraculous draught, the leaping into the sea, it may he 
the older promises to Peter, — that it appeared then, as it has 
appeared since ^, no unfitting conclusion to the last teaching of 
St. J ohn. "With this preliminary view of the general spirit 
and object with which the account was given, we may now, 
as far as may be, endeavour to conceive the immediate scene 
and circumstances when it represents the words to have been 
spoken. 

It was the early dawn upon the sea of Galilee ; the fishing 
vessel with its little crew of naked fishermen, headed by 
Peter, was once again, after a long interval, on the waters 
of the lake ; and now again, as once before, the long night 
had passed away in useless toil. Then it was that there came 
the friendly voice from the shore, heard through the stillness 
of the morning air, the sudden draught of fishes, the instant 
recognition which that sign of former times brought home to 
the mind of the younger of the sons of Zebedee, that " it 
" was the Lord = In a moment they rush to land ; — Peter, 
with his characteristic vehemence, plunging ^ into the lake, 

' "I almost seem to see the whole Gospel in it." — Arnold. 

s One is perhaps hardly justified in assuming a reference to the 
miracle in Luke v. 9. Yet when one considers the reflective character 
of the whole narrative, it is evidently spoken of as resulting from the 
sudden revival of an old association, the mention (elsewhere not oc- 
curring in St. John) of the sons of Zebedee, it may be worth while to 
suggest whether it be not the most obvious solution of the recogni- 
tion which is here described. 

^ I have ventured thus to enter into the details, because the narra- 
tive itself invites us to do so. It is evident that Peter rushed to 
shore through the shallow water, which could only be approached in 
the little boat (t^ -n-Xoiapi^) attached to the larger fishing vessel (rh 
irXoTov), as is still the custom with the Galilean fishermen, (see Light's 
Travels in Palestine, p. 205). Like them, he was naked ; and hence, 
when he waded to land, he is said (not to have cast off but) to have 
put on his outer garment which he had thrown off whilst fishing. 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



131 



the others following in the little boat (rw n'koiapla)) by which 
they neared the shallow water which the larger vessel (to 
irXolov) conld not approach, and with the heavy net behind, 
which Peter dragged up the shelving bank, and spread upon 
the white margin of the shell -besprinkled beach. 

But it was not now, as it had been in other days; an 
awful silence reigned through that solemn meal ; no inter- 
change of questions and of answers, as on the last supper in 
the upper chamber, or as on the feeding of the five thousand 
on the mountain-side. He was still indeed the same holy 
and loving Master; they knew that it was "the Lord:" 
but they felt also that their relation was changed : He was 
now to speak, and they, except at His command, to be silent. 

And now, when the meal was over, in those accents of 
mingled love and rebuke, which seemed to blend in one the 
recollection of all those previous addresses of former times, 
there came the question, thrice repeated, Simon, son of 
"Jonas, lovest thou Me?" and in the first of the three, 
" lovest thou Me more than these?" It is not the address 
now to Peter as the future Apostle, but to Simon, the man, 
the disciple, the friend, who, as he had thrice denied, was 
now thrice called upon to avow that love to his Master^ 
which alone could blot out the memory of his sin; and 
which at least in its outward manifestations existed, as 
Chrysostom has said, more fervently in him than in any of 
the others. Thrice he answered, "Yea, Lord, Thou (crv) 
" knowest that I love Thee." It is allowable to mark the 
contrast between the confident words, "Though all should 
" forsake Thee yet will not I," and this refusal to answer 
at all for himself, much more to institute comparisons be- 

The scene is also marked by the word alylakos ; one of those spots 
where the shore of the lake descends to the water side not in a steep 
grassy slope, but a beach either of shingle or of shell and sand, (see 
" Sinai and Palestine," c. x.) 
» " Love covers the multitude of sins," 1 Pet. iv. 8. 



132 



ON" THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



tween himself and the others, — this throwing of the ques- 
tion back on the searching knowledge which he now felt, 
by sad experience, to be indeed possessed by Him, to whom, 
in his last reply, he felt that he could truly say, not merely 
Thou knowest my love," but " Thou knowest (6tSa?) all 
things; all things are given to Thee both in heaven and 
in earth; Thou^ canst recognise {yiyvcja-Keis), though I 
dare not, the depth of that love which I bear to Thee; 
not the mere general affection which Thou askest of me, 
" and which Thou hast enjoined to all Thy^disciples {dyaTn]^), 

^ It is difficult to suppose that these words are in the same sentence 
interchanged at random ; and the meaning which is here given to 
them corresponds with tha^ which they bear in a somewhat similar 
juxtaposition. "Jesus' divine power I recognise {yiyvtaaKci}), Paul's 
" historical existence I know (eViVTayuai)." Acts xix. 15. Here, as 
usual, the distinction is lost in the Peschito, and preserved in the 
Philoxenus version. 

1 Here again the words are interchanged, evidently with the sense 
above affixed to them, 'Aydirr] is the general love from man to God, 
and from man to man, for the sake of God, which occm-s so often in 
the writings of John. ^i\ia is a term, as the readers of Aristotle 
know, more general than our word " friendship," inasmuch as it in- 
cludes aU family relations — yet still having this in common with it, 
that it always impHes personal affection, and is, according to Aris- 
totle's definition, iKeiuov %v€Ka. (Eth. viii. 3.) It is of course a doubt- 
ful criticism which transfers the rules of classical Greek to that of the 
New Testament. But the distinct ideas which he at the root of words 
often survive many changes, and in cases like the present, where a 
direct contrast is made, are the surest guide in determining the sense. 
It would seem to be from a feeHng of reverence that the more special 
affection of our Lord for John and Lazarus is always expressed by 
the more general word a-ya-wav : the only exception is the speech in 
the mouth of the unbelieving bystanders at the grave of Lazarus, 
" Behold how He loved him," (e<^tAei,) John xi. 36. It is also to be 
observed, that in the last of our Lord's three questions <pi\e7s is sub- 
stituted for ayairas, as if the sense was, " Thy double avowal has satis- 
" fied Me that thou lovest Me generally ; but hast thou indeed that 
" true personal love which thou claimest to have, and which so sig- 



ON" THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



133 



" but the deep personal affection vs'hich one human friend 
" bears to another," (<^(Xi'a.) It was after each of these suc- 
cessive answers (according to that universal law exhibited in 
Scripture, God answering for man only when man answers 
for himself, bestowing His gifts not arbitrarily, but through 
and because of the moral and spiritual affections of man) that 
our Lord repeats those charges, which bear the same relation 
to the promise in St. Matthew that the confession of indi- 
vidual affection here bears to the confession of general belief 
there. The peculiarly Hebrew imagery is dropped ; the par- 
ticular features of the Eock and the Keys and the binding 
and loosing, which were to be exemplified in his rule of the 
Palestine Church disappear ; and we have instead the more 
universal metaphor with which the readers of this Gospel 
must have been already familiar from the parable of the 
Good Shepherd. It is as if the sense were: *'Love is the 
" true condition of Apostleship ; he only who excels his bre- 
thren in love may excel them in power ; and if thou lovest 
" thy Master truly, thou shalt be as thou wast before. But 
" He will be no longer with you. The Chief Shepherd shall 
" be withdrawn from this earthly scene; it will be for thee 
to shew thy love to Him by care for those whom He leaves 
behind. (Comp. Matt. xxv. 40 ; x. 40.) Therefore, ac- 
cording to each successive avowal of thy love, follow the 
"successive charges"^, Feed My Iambs; Give that tender 

" nally failed in the hour of the betrayal?" In the English the dis- 
tinction is wholly lost. The Vulgate has made an ineffectual attempt 
to preserve it in "dihgo" and "amo." It is of more importance to 
observe, that here, according to its usual, though not invariable prac- 
tice, the Syiiac version of the Peschito employs the one word rohem 
for both, whilst the PhUoxenian, according to its professed object of 
preserving the Greek text as faithfully as possible, renders ^iAeTj/ by 
rohem, and ayanau by maheb. 

The distinction between the words &pvLa and Trpd^ara, ^6(TKe and 
irolfiaive, whatever may be meant by it, is surely as undeniable as that 
between (piXuu and ayairau, although Lilcke, who maintains the first, 



134 



OI^" THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



care to the little ones, to the young of thy flock, which they 
"especially need; Be the shepherd of My sheep {noiixaLve) ; 
" Guide and protect the matured and full-grown disciples 
"through the dangers which will attack them; and also 
" Feed My sheep; forget not in thy higher task that even 
" the oldest may require the same tender care that thou 
" owest to the young." It is needless to repeat the events 
of Peter's earlier life, in which this charge, no less than the 
promise in St. Matthew, was realized. But as it was prohar 
bly to the latest recollections of Peter's life that this chapter 
was addressed, so it is prohably the more general image, now 
fading in the distance, and more especially that implied in 
his Pirst Epistle, that its readers would recognise : and, if 
nothing more, it is at least a striking coincidence and illus- 
tration of this passage that there is no part of the New Testa- 
ment (with the exception of John x.) where the image of the 
shepherd is so prominently brought forward as in this very 
Pirst Epistle of Peter ^, where almost the very words of this 

denies the second. It is true that in the two corresponding passages 
of Matt. X. 16, Luke x. 3, ivyo^aTa and apvas are used as synonymous ; 
but this cannot apply to a context where they both occur together : 
and the meaning here given is certainly borne out by the two pas- 
sages referred to in the writings of the two Apostles chiefly concerned, 
(1 John ii. 12; 1 Pet. v. 1, 5). And again, when we remember the 
danger and difficulty implied in the eastern notion of a shepherd, 
(comp. John x. 11, 12 ; 1 Sam. xvii. 34, 35 ; and, taken as it probably 
should be, in conjunction with the earher part of the chapter, 1 Pet. 
V. 8,) there is nothing strange in tracing a difference between the sim- 
ple notion of " feeding," and that of " being a shepherd." In both the 
Sjaiac versions the distinction is lost, as there is but one word in 
Syriac to express the two ideas. 

n 1 Pet. V. 2 — 4. " Feed the flock of God which is among you, 
" taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but wiUingly ; not 
" for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over 
" God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the 
" chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that 
" fadeth not away." 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



135 



passage are repeated, and where in the same connexion the 
very distinction that seems implied in our Lord's address, be- 
tween the elder and the younger disciples, is drawn out with 
an emphasis peculiar to himself (v. 1 — 5) and St. John 
(1 John ii. 12). (See also the previous Essay on the Apostolic 
office on the word ^EttIo-kottos.) 

But as this passage, unlike the one in St. Matthew, has re- 
ference to Peter's individual history, rather than to his apo- 
stolical mission, and to the later part of that history rather 
than the earlier, so the address of our Lord here includes the 
allusions to his death, in which, as I have said, the later 
generation of the age of John would naturally take a deep 
interest. The general sense, in part arising from the contrast 
between the younger and older members of the flock who 
would need Peter's care, might perhaps be expressed thus : 
" This is thy charge, which if thou lovest thy Lord truly, 
" thou wilt fulfil, arduous though it will be. For in thy 
youth, before these heavier cares have fallen upon thee, thou 
wast free to follow thine own pleasure, even just as now in 
" the boat thou couldst gird° thy fisher's coat about thee, or 
cast it off as thou wouldest ; or walk (nepienaTe^s) along the 
shores of the lake, or tread its shelving sands, according to 
" thine own free will. But it is a far different portion which 
" awaits thy future years. Thou hast loved thy Master 
^' hitherto ; canst thou love Him also in age, when thou wilt 
" have to sacrifice thine own pleasure in all things, when 

° The repetition of the word " gird," (efcoz/j/ues,) which had occurred 
so immediately before (Sie^wo-aro in ver. 7), fixes the reference to the 
ordinary occupations of Peter's youth. That it is a natural reference 
is confirmed by its occurrence (without any direct intention of eluci- 
dating this passage) in a similar contrast in the Christian Year. (St. 
Peter's Day.) 

* "Or haply to his native lake 

His vision wafts him back, to talk 
With Jesus, ere His flight He take, 
As in that solemn evening walk." 



136 



ox THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



" thou shalt stretcli forth thine hands on the cross which must 
" he borne by all His true disciples ; when thou shalt be the 

sport of the rude hands of enemies, to gird thee with an- 
" other than a fisher's belt, to carry thee to other places than 
" the free air of the Galilean lake? And now if thou fearest 
" not this, once more, as at thy fii'stP call, and as was pro- 
" mised to thee at the Last Su^^er, follow IT^." 

In itself the passage is not so much a prediction of an ac- 
tual event, as a warning of general suffering and distress, such 
as the passage, so strikingly similar to this in its immediately 
following upon the promise in ITatt. xvi. 18, " If any mani 
" will come after lie, let him deny himself and tah up his 
" cross and follow Me.'' (Matt. xvi. 24.) But it is precisely 
after the manner of the fourth Evangelist to refer to specific 
details, as the fulfilment of promises or warnings which them- 
selves bear a more general signification, (see John vii. 39 ; xii. 
33, 38, and most indisputably xviii. 9). And in this case 
especially, where the words seemed expressly framed to meet 
the exact circumstances of Peter's death (the literal exten- 
sion of the arms, the literal binding, whether of the girdle ^ 
round his loins, or of his ^ hands and feet to the cross), it was 
natural that the particular should throw the general into 
the shade, and that the self-crucifixion of Peter through his 
whole subsequent life should seem to be concentrated in the 
actual crucifixion which closed it, and thus signify ''by what 

death he should glorify God" — even as the two thoughts 

P Matt. iv. 19 ; John xiii. 36. 

■3 So again the notion of "binding with a gii'dle" was expressive 
not only of the binding at crucifixion, but of imprisonment and afflic- 
tion generally. (Acts xxi. 11.) 

^ Eyang. Nicod, 10. 

" Tunc Petrus ab altero yineitm-, cum cruci adsti-ingitm\ Tert. adv. 
Gnost., c. 15. This maybe a fair testimony to the general practice of 
binding, as well as nailing, criminals to the cross ; but it is too evi- 
dently founded on this passage to be considered as an independent 
testimony to the particular mode of Peter's crucifixion. 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



137 



are beautifully blended together in the legend which is in 
fact a comment on this whole passage, and which represents 
Peter as escaping from Eome on the eve of his martyrdom, as 
if at the last seeking to have again that liberty which he was 
here warned to sacrifice, and meeting on the Appian way the 
vision of his risen Lord, who said, "Yenio Eomam iterum 
" crucifigi'^ 

The coincidence of this last passage with Matt. xvi. 24 has 
been just observed ; it is remarkable, and may perhaps thro^ 
some light on the context, that the parallel still seems to con- 
tinue, and that in Matt. xvi. 28 occurs the passage which of 
all in the three first Gospels most nearly corresponds to the 
concluding words in John xxi. 19 — 22, Of these words, as 
forming the keystone of the whole chapter, and also occupy- 
ing a prominent place in one of the subsequent Sermons, it 
will not be out of place to give an explanation here, though 
not immediately connected with the character of Peter. 

As the last words to Peter were uttered (so we must con- 
ceive the scene), the Lord turned to depart ; Peter, with 
the natural energy of his character, and also with the ten- 
dency which so often appears in the minds of the disciples, 
to take in its immediate literal sense what really could have 
only a spiritual meaning, sprang forward as if in obedience to 
His injunction to ''follow Him," forgetting for the moment 
that as He came and went amongst them not as in former 
times, so they could be with Him only in the higher sense 
which His address had of itself indicated. But as Peter thus 
hung on his Master's parting words, another step was heard 
behind, and he turned and beheld the beloved Disciple, silent 
as before, but, now that the dialogue with Peter was closed, 
following like him, in rapt attention, the track of his depart- 
ing Lord. "What wonder if, with the thought of the marked 

* As 1 Pet. V. 1 — 5 may be considered, an allusion to the first part 
of the address, so it might seem that 2 Pet. i. 14 is in aUusiou to the 
second part of it. 



138 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



contrast of their characters, the active energy of the one, the 
passive gentleness of the other, impressed as it was even on 
the minute details of -this brief scene, — elated it may be by 
his own restoration to favour, and excited by the foreshadow- 
ing of his own future destiny, — the natural impetuousness of 
Peter should break through the awful reverence which had 
up to that moment prevailed over the meeting, and vent itself 
in the question partly of eager curiosity, partly of half-ex- 
pressed complaint or personal interest at the fate of his 
youthful friend, too retiring to ask for himself, "Lord, and 
what shall this man do ?" It was on this occasion, it was 
under such circumstances, (so we can imagine the feeling to 
have run which dictated the record of this scene,) that the 
Lord uttered that memorable speech, on which has been 
founded the belief that John ''should never die;" — with 
how much or how little truth may be inferred from the 
speech itself. 

Jesus saith unto him, " If I will that he tarry till I come, 
" what is that to thee ? Follow thou Me." The first im- 
pression conveyed, and intended to be conveyed, is of a re- 
buke to Peter; that same rebuke which throughout the 
Scriptures, but in the Gospel History especially, is addressed 
to those who leave the thought of their own duties for pro- 
fitless enquiries about the fate of others. ''Lord, are there 
" few that be saved?" was a similar question of Peter's on 
a former occasion, and met by a similar answer, "Strive to 
" enter in at the strait gate^." And now the solemnity of 
the rebuke was enhanced by the additional awe which in- 
vested all their interviews since the Kesurrection, and which 
more than ever refused to be broken in upon by questions of 
idle or irreverent curiosity. " Touch Me not" is the prevail- 
ing tone which pervades the whole mysterious intercourse of 
the Porty Days. 

33ut in this as in many of our Lord's rebukes, a positive 
* Luke xiii. 23, 24. 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



139 



lesson lies hid under the negative form in which it is couched, 
just as we find an eternal truth wrapt up in the answers to 
the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matt, xxiii., although the 
outward form in which they are expressed is intended not 
so much to impart truth, as to confute error. Even regard- 
ing it still in its reference to Peter, there is the general in- 
struction conveyed which is so beautifully deduced from it in 
the Christian Year, and which so strongly resembles the an- 
swer given to the somewhat similar question of the same 
Apostle on a previous occasion, We have forsaken all and 
''followed Thee, what shall we have therefore?" (Matt, 
xix. 27 — XX. 16;) or to the demand of the mother of John 
himself, when she asked for her two sons the loftiest places 
in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. xx. 21.) *' What is it to 

thee, if he tarry ^ till Christ comes, in rest and peace, whilst 

thou art led to suffering and death ? What is it to him, if 
" he linger on year after year in loneliness and weariness of 
" spirit, whilst thou art serving in active self-denial? Each 

of Christ's servants has his appointed task. Thou art the 
" first, and yet it may be thy lot to become the last, and he 

the last and youngest of the Apostles may by his happy 
*' and peaceful end become the first : thou mayest glory in 

thy martyr's death, but he too may serve though he only 

' As in the previous passage, much depended on the double mean- 
ings of "gird" and "walk," {^dovuwai irepnrarelv,) SO here on the vari- 
ous significations of fxeueiu. It is no doubt this very fulness of sense 
which renders the word so appropriate. (1.) It is probably chosen 
from its immediate contrast with aKoXovdei. "He may stand still 
" here, but thou must follow My departing steps," But then (2.) it 
also has the sense which it seems to have acquired in the apostolic 
writings of " continuing in life," 1 Cor. xv. 6 ; 1 Thess. iv. 17, in 
which sense it must have been understood by the authors of the 
rumour of John's immortality. And (3.) both meanings must be in- 
vested with the notion of permanence and quiet resting, which, in St. 
John's writings especially, is the peculiar force of this word. (See inter 
alia, i. 32, 33 ; xiv. 17 ; xy. 4 ; 1 John iv. 16.) 



140 



ox THE PEOillSES TO PETEE. 



'stand and wait:' the cup that he shall drink and the 
baptism that he shall be baptized with is far different from, 
thine, and from that of his elder brother, yet each shall 
have the reward that is prepared for him. In the Father's 
house are many mansions, and divers are the paths which 
lead thither : whether therefore thou murmurest for thy- 
self, or complainest for him, rest content in the belief that 
that which ' I will ' is good." 

Such, if we may so far venture to paraphi^ase the Lord's 
words, is the most obvious and general lesson which they 
convey, the lesson of that resignation to the will of God 
and Christ, in which, according to the well-known saying 
of Eishop Butler, is involved the whole sum of human piety. 
But that "will" is on this occasion expressed in such de- 
finite language, as to invite to a consideration not merely of 
man's duty under it, whatever it might be, but of what it 
actually w^s to be. The natural inference undoubtedly is 
that His will was that John should "tarry till He came." 
The first and most obvious sense in which this must have 
been fulfilled to the mind of the early Church, was that he, 
alone of all the more celebrated Apostles, lived to see the 
close of the Jewish dispensation in the fall of Jerusalem, 
which in the thoughts of the first disciples and in the speeches 
of our Lord Himself was blended with what is called "the 
" coming of the Son of Man." It would be in this case an 
almost exact parallel in sense, as well as in position, to Matt, 
xvi. 28. There, as here, the general tenor of the whole pas- 
sage speaks of the final reward of Christ's servants according 
to their several works at His coming, and of the near ap- 
proach of that coming within the lifetime of those who 
heard Him. The only difference would be that what is 
there spoken in general terms of the existing generation is 
here concentred in the person of John ; a concentration, to 
which the natural feeling of the early Church towards the 
sole surviving representative of the original Apostles would 



OJT THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



141 



at once respond, and which, is no less familiar to later ages 
from the connexion of his name with the book which is writ- 
ten in express expectation of Him who comes quickly, and 
whose reward is with Him to give to every man as his 
" work shall be," (Eev. xxii. 12.) 

But this sense of our Lord's words did not satisfy the feel- 
ing of the Church, after this first coming was past and gone 
and John still remained alive. Of the belief which arose in 
consequence that he should never die, there will be occasion 
to speak hereafter, (see Essay on the Traditions respecting 
St. John.) We are here concerned not with their false in- 
terpretation, but with what we may conceive to be the true 
interpretation still remaining after the words had received 
their first and historical fulfilment. The " coming of the 
" Lord," as we know from the variety of passages in which 
it occurs, expresses any such epoch or " crisis" in the world's 
history as may be considered in some sense a foreshadowing 
of its final end and judgment. Sometimes it may be marked 
with " fearful sights and great signs," as in the fall of Jeru- 
salem and of Rome, (Luke xxi. 11,) sometimes "coming not 
" with observation, with no man saying ' Lo here' or * Lo 
there,' for behold the kingdom of God is within us." (Luke 
xvii. 21.) Such a coming as the last of these two modes was 
the close of the apostolical age at the end of the first cen- 
tury ; to ordinary observers imperceptible, gradually passing 
away with the last sands in the hour-glass of one enfeebled, 
speechless, solitary old man ; yet withal a crisis which evea 
more than the fall of Jerusalem or of Rome marked off the 
end of that generation from all which preceded it, inasmuch 
as it marked on the one hand the extinction of the last re- 
flected ray of the Divine Presence which had illuminated 
the whole of that period with a preternatural intensity of 
light; but on the other hand the beginning of that great 
society, which, as now left to itself, and its indwelling 
Spirit, was now what we call in its ordinary sense the Chris- 



142 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETEE. 



tian Church, " the holy city, coming down from God out of 
" heaven, prepared as a bride to meet her husband." This 
crisis^, the point of transition between the miraculous and 
the natural, between the age of the Apostles and the age of 
the Church, between the times of the earthly and the times 
of the spiritual J erusalem, St. John lived to see and in this 
sense may truly be said to have waited till his Lord came to 
call him to Himself. One remaining and still higher sense 
there is in which those words may have been in part ful- 
filled, in the work which is still left and always will be left 
to be performed till the end of all things, by the spirit of 
John, whether in his own writings, or in the living monu- 
ments of his earthly likenesses. But for this so much more 
fitting a place will be found in the Sermon upon St. John 
that it need not be further pursued here. 

It may be allowed in conclusion to call attention to the 
striking example which this passage affords of " inspii^ation," 
or whatever else we may call the characteristic difference be- 
tween ordinary writings and those in the Sacred Volume. 
Here is a chapter, of which it might be alleged that the 
peculiarities of its style and composition suggest the proba- 
bility of its having passed through other hands than the 
Apostle himself; an interpretation of our Lord's words is 
spoken of as generally current in the Church ; an interpreta- 
tion which actually laid so great a hold of the existing gene- 
ration that it has required nearly seventeen centuries to shake 
it entirely off ; an interpretation too, which from its definite- 
ness and precision would in some respects have exactly suited 
the mind which so loved to trace the fulfilment of the Lord's 
words in particular specific events. And yet, thus hovering 
as it does on the very confines of the sacred writings, thus 
seeming even to demand admission, it is rejected. The Evan- 
gelist goes to the very verge ; he mentions it ; he does not 



^ See ZiiUig's Introduction to the Apocalypse, p. 67. 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



143 



even declare it to be false ; lie contents himself with stating 
the real saying on which it professed to rest. Eut, as if by 
an infallible instinct, he there pauses ; and the New Testa- 
ment is relieved from having given the slightest sanction to 
a belief, which however natural and even beautiful in itself, 
was yet sure to degenerate into wild superstition, and which 
even in its simplest form was incompatible with the stern 
plainness of Christian history. 

III. The Peomises to Petee m Luke v. 1 — 10; 
xxii. 31, 32. 

"And it came to "pass, that, as the people pressed upon 
Him to hear the word of God, He stood by the lake of 
" Gennesareth, and saw two ships standing by the lake: but 
" the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing 
their nets. And He entered into one of the ships, which 
was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out 
" a little from the land. And He sat down, and taught the 
people out of the ship. Now when He had left speaking, 
He said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let 
down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said 
*' unto Him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have 
" taken nothing: nevertheless at Thy word I will let down 
" the net. And when they had this done, they inclosed a 
" great multitude of fishes : and their net brake. And 
" they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other 
ship, that they should come and help them. And they 
came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. 
" "When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, 
" saying, Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord. 
For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the 
draught of the fishes which they had taken : and so was 
" also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were 
" partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Pear 



144 



ON THE PROMISES TO PETER. 



" not ; from henceforth thou shalt catch men." Lnke v. 
1—10. 

" And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath 
" desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat : hut 
*' I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not : and when 
" thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." Luke xxii. 
31, 32. 

The compilatory ^ character of St. Luke's Gospel precludes 
the possibility of fixing on the intention of any particular 
narrative in it with as much precision as is attainable in the 
others. Still there is a general purpose running throughout, 
however much obscured by incidental causes. That the uni- 
versal diffusion of Christianity as a fact is the chief object of 
that "second treatise" which we now call "the Acts of the 
" Apostles" no one will doubt, and it seems probable that in 
like manner the universal applicability of Christianity even 
to the lowest and most degraded states of humanity is the 
prevailing characteristic of his "first treatise," now called 
his " Gospel." Such at least is the tenor of most of those 
parts which are peculiar to it, and such apparently the occa- 
sion of the insertion of the two passages now before us. The 
prominent feature in each of the two transactions is the con- 
trast between the struggles and weakness of Peter's human 
nature, and the gracious assurance of his Divine Master. 
The great Jewish Apostle, as in St. Matthew, the passionate 
and eager friend, as in St. John, are here put out of sight. 
It is only the man Simon that is set before us, in whose life, 
as in the prodigal son, the woman who was a sinner, and 
all the other characters peculiarly brought out in this Gospel, 
a lesson may be read to the desponding minds whom it was 
intended especially to console. 

It is therefore from a wholly new point of view that we 

y As stated in the Preface to the Gospel (Luke i. 1 — 5), and as 
drawn out at length by Schleiermacher. 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



145 



now approach the promises to Peter ; their suhstance is the 
same, hut their form, their context, their intention is entirely 
different. Fear not, for henceforth thou shalt catch men," 
(Luke V. 10,) conveys no douht the same truth as was ex- 
pressed in St. Matthew hy the Eock, and in St. John by the 
Shepherd ; it is but the image which would be most natu- 
rally used in the first call of the Apostles to that higher life 
of which their common occupations furnished so ready a like- 
ness : as in that higher life it would also bring back to their 
minds the humble origin from which they had risen to it. 
But it would seem as though the words were here recorded 
not so much as an augury of the future greatness of the Ga- 
lilean Fisherman," but rather as an answer of comforting 
re-assurance to the feeling of conscious sin, which, as in our 
first parents, so in the first Apostle, shrunk from the presence 
of Divinity and vented itself in the despairing cry, Depart 
" from me, for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord." " Fear not to 
" approach, it is for thee and such as thee that these mighty 
" wonders are wrought. The presence of Christ, divine 
" though it be, will not be death to thee, but life ; and if 
" thou folio west Him, thou shalt perform wonders far greater 
" than that which thou now seest ; not the mute unconscious 

creatures of the deep, but living human beings shall hence- 
" forth be thy spoil." 

So again the address at the Last Supper, Luke xxii. 31, 
32, was doubtless fulfilled when the wavering resolutions 
of the early Church were ''strengthened" by the reviving 
energy of Peter at the election of Matthias, at the day of 
Pentecost, before the Sanhedrin : in the council, and in the 
first and second Epistle. But all these mighty works of the 
great Apostle lay far in the remote horizon of that awful 
evening. All the nearer prospect was overclouded — doubt, — 
betrayal — sorrow even unto death — desperate declarations of 
fidelity, which by their very vehemence proved their fickle- 
ness ; — such were the thoughts and words which brooded over 

L 



146 



OK THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



the closing meal. It was amidst associations such as these 
that the chief Apostle was singled out to receive his Master's 
warning. Again, in the repetition of the name "Simon, 
^' Simon," we recognise the same solemn form, as in the ear- 
lier and later address, but it is now not in allusion to what 
he was about to be, but to what he actually was ; the vision 
set before him is not of the future, but of the present and 
the past, not clothed in the imagery of the national prophecies, 
but of that book which above all others in the Old Testament 
speaks of the struggles and temptations of the individual 
man in the presence of his Maker. It is the opening of the 
book of Job that furnishes the medium through which the 
inward and spiritual contest is represented to the outward 
sense. As in a previous occasion, peculiar to this same Gos- 
pel, it had been said on the return of the Seventy % ''I be- 
" held Satan fall from heaven like lightning," as if the court 
of heaven had been opened before Him, and at the triumph 
of good the Accuser had visibly fallen from his wonted place 
amongst the sons of God; so here the same scene is again 
displayed, but with its brightness overcast by the coming on 
of the " hour of the power of darkness," brought before us 
also in this especial Gospel, with a vividness and emphasis 
peculiar to itself. (Luke xxii. 53.) It is, if we may so far 
bring out the latent image implied in the sacred words, "It 
"is no light trial which is now impending over you, it was 
" no slight demand which has, as it were even now, been 
" made and obtained by the great Adversary^ as he stood 
" before the throne of heaven, and received permission from 
" the Most High to sift as on a threshing floor the good 
" from the bad who are mixed up in your company." (Comp. 
" Ye are clean but not all," John xiii. 10.) "But, great as 
" the trial will be to all, and, above all, to thee, the first and 
" chief Apostle, fear not. One there was who at that mo- 



* Luke X. 18. 



» Compare Eev. 11. 10. 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



147 



ment sent up His prayer to the Father that thou at least 
mightest come through victorious, that thy faith might not 
sink under the terrors of the coming distress; and it will 
be for thee therefore, whensoever the time may come that 
thy spirit shall revive, and that thou shalt turn again from 
" thy flight {imarpe^as Tro're,) to support those whose faith 
has even more than thine given way under the danger 
'' when thou hast known what it is to be tried thyself, thou 
" wilt be the better able to strengthen ^ others." 

The sense, here given, is so much lost in the English ver- 
sion, that it may be necessary to justify it in detail. 1. 
The translation of the aorists i^riTrjaaTo and iberja-dixrjv, "has 
"desired" and "have prayed," instead of "desired" and 
" prayed," though allowable and perhaps necessary in some 
cases, is a violation of the usual rule, which in this case is not 
only not called for, but destroys the vividness with which 
the trial, so to speak, is brought forward as in a scene or 
vision which had just passed as they were speaking. 2. The 
want of emphasis in the English pronoun "I" {iycb 8e) also 
prevents us from seeing the contest, as it were, between Satan 
or the Adversary on the one hand, and Christ on the other, 
for the souls of the Apostles. Comp. Zech. iii. 1 ; Rev. xii. 
10, and the whole passage in John xvii. 11, 12, where there 
is the same sifting implied, one of them being actually lost 
in the process, and where the prayer for their safety is ac- 
tually off'ered up by our Lord. 3. The present confusion of 
"you" and "thou," causes most modern readers to overlook 
the distinction which is faithfully represented in the original 
between Peter and the other Apostles. All of them were to 
be sifted by Satan, but it was for Feter that the prayer was 
especially offered up, and Feter who was especially warned 
to comfort the rest ; a distinction in accordance with the 
actual result, inasmuch as the others all fled at once, but 
Peter's courage alone (with the exception of John) endured 
^' Kev. iii. 3. 



148 



OJ?- THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



till the last moment, and also (with the same exception) was 
the first to revive. 4. i^rjTfjo-aro is not merely "desired" or 

asked," but " succeeded in his request," a sense not only in 
accordance with the general ^ usage of the word, but almost 
required by the context, which implies that they were all to 
be tried, though one only was to be lost; and the others, 
though overcome for a time, were to be restored. (John xiii. 
10.) 5. emo-rpeyj/as nore, is ill expressed by "when thou art 

converted." The indefinite Trore throws a remoteness and 
uncertainty over it, in accordance with the general gloom 
of the whole context, and the verb contains a direct allu- 
sion to the flight and discomfiture of the Apostles, as implied 
not only in the parallel passage in Matt, xxvi, 31, but in 
Peter's answer in this very place (Luke xxii. 33), "Lord, 
" why speak of flight and return? with Thee I am ready 
" to go in undivided companionship to prison and to death." 

The foregoing remarks on the promises to Peter have 
been confined to the explanation of the original meaning of 

See Greswell's Dissertations, vol. iii. p. 114. 
^ The only allusion to the promises to St. Peter contained in St. 
Mark's Gospel is when in the catalogue of the Apostles it is said, 
" Simon He surnamed Peter, and James and John, Boanerges." It 
might be asked why in a Gospel ascribed by general tradition to the 
teaching of St. Peter, all the more especial mention of Peter's bless- 
ing should be omitted, and (without ascribing it, as has sometimes 
been done, to the supposed modesty of the Apostle, or to the intended 
neutrahty of the Evangelist) it might be answered that, unless in 
works especially written with a view to exalt the author, it would be 
more natural, than not, that the author should be thi'own into the 
shade. If we had a second history of the Peloponnesian war we 
should probably learn more from it concerning the hf e of Thucydides, 
than we can from his own narrative. But this is a precarious argu- 
ment, and it is safer to ascribe the omission merely to the absence of 
any particular occasion for mentioning it, such as we have seen to 
exist, in different degrees and forms, in the Gospels of St. Matthew, 
St. John, and St. Luke. 



ON" THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



149 



the passages, without entering on ther wider application which 
has been given in the Sermon, or the subordinate applica- 
tions which have at different times been affixed to them. 
They have, as is well known, been greatly varied according 
to the circumstances of the age, and the point of view from 
which the passage was approached. In the fourth and hfth 
centuries, the whole stress was laid on the confession of Peter, 
as an argument for our Lord's divinity, in the Arian contro- 
versy which was then at its height. In the sixth, seventh, 
and following centuries, it was adduced to support the then 
rising power of the supposed successor of Peter in the person 
of the "Western Patriarch. In the sixteenth and seventeenth, 
this last interpretation was again met by the revival, although 
under a somewhat different form, of the more dogmatical view 
of the fifth and sixth, and between these two the works of 
controversial divines have to a great extent oscillated ever 
since. But wherever the immediate points of dispute have 
fallen out of sight, there the more spiritual and universal ex- 
planation which has been quoted in the Sermon from the 
commentary of Origen on this passage has maintained its 
ground. Prom time to time the vehemence of controversy 
has thrown it into the shade, or endeavoured to explain it 
away : but on the whole, whether we look at the long chain 
of patristic opinions collected by Dupin and Gratz, and in 
the Appendix to the recent Oxford edition of Tertullian, or 
whether we turn to the Churches of the Eeformation, — the 
Church of England as represented in the Apology^ of the 
final compiler of its Articles, (to give one authority out of 
many) — the Churches of the Continent, as represented in 
the almost unanimous opinion of their latest divines, — we 
shall find that amidst much fluctuation and contradiction 
even of the same writers with themselves, it is after all this 
interpretation which alone includes them all, and with which 
for that reason this discussion shall be closed ^. 

^ See Jewell's Apology, part 6. ^ Origen ad Matt. xvi. 



150 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



If we shall say, like Peter, * Thou art the Christ, the Son 
" of the living God,' not by the revelation of flesh and hlood, 
" but by the light of our Father which is in heaven shining 
^' into our heart, we become Peter, and to us might be said by 
the Word, ' Thou art Peter,' &c. For every disciple of 
Peter is a rock, from the time when (or 'from whom' d<^' 
" ov) they drank of him who drank from *the spiritual rock 
which followed them,' and upon every such rock is built 
" the whole teaching of the Church (6 iKKXrjo-tao-TiKos nas \6- 
" 70s), and the polity formed according to such teaching; for 
" in every individual of those who, being perfect, have the 
*' collection of those words, and deeds, and thoughts, which 
" make up the state of the blessed, there is the Church which 
" is built by God." [After extending this to the other Apo- 
stles, and explaining the meaning of the gates of hell, he 
proceeds.] " I^ow let us see in what sense it has been said 
" to Peter and to every one who is Peter, (r« Uerpw kqi Travrl 
'' Uerpa,) 'I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of 
" heaven.' And first I think that it has been said in con- 
" nexion with 'the gates of hell shall not prevail,' &c. ; for 
" he is worthy from the same Word to receive the keys of the 
" kingdom of heaven who has guarded himself against *the 
" gates of hell, lest they should prevail against him,' as 
" though in return for the powerlessness against him of the 
" gates of hell he was to receive for a reward the keys of the 
" kingdom of heaven, that he may open for himself the gates 
" which are closed against those who are conquered by the 
" gates of hell : and he enters, if he is gifted with self-con- 
" trol, then through a gate as it were of self-control, opened 
" by the key which opens self-control, and if he is just, 
" through the gate of justice opened by the key of justice, 
" and so in the case of all the other virtues ; for I conceive 
" that by every virtue of knowledge some mysteries of wisdom, 
" according to the corresponding forms of virtue, are opened 
" to him who lives virtuously, the Saviour giving to those 



ON THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



151 



who are not overcome by the gates of hell as many keys as 
" there are virtues, opening an equal number of gates accord- 
ing to the revelation of the mysteries to each separate vir- 
tue; perhaps too each separate virtue is itself the kingdom 
" of heaven, and all virtue collectively is ' the kingdom of the 
Jieavens^ ;^ so that, according to this, he is already in the 
" kingdom of the heavens who lives according to the several 
" virtues; and thus, 'Eepent, for the kingdom of heaven is 
" at hand,' is not to be referred to time, but to acts and dis- 
" positions, for Christ, who is Himself the sum of every vir- 
tue, has taken up His abode there, and speaks, and there- 
^' fore it is within His disciples, that the kingdom of God is, 
" not 'Lo here' or 'Lo there.' And see what power is pos- 
sessed by the rock on which the Church is built by Christ, 
and by every one that says, ' Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God,' so much so that his judgments remain 
" firm, as though God judged in him, that in that very act of 
" judging the gates of hell should not prevail against him. 
" Against him, therefore, who judges unjustly, and does not 
" bind upon earth according to God's word, nor loose upon 
earth according to His will, the gates of hell shall prevail, 
but he against whom they do not prevail judges justly. 
Therefore he has the keys of the kingdom of the heavens, 
" opening them to those who are loosed on earth and free, 
" that also in the heavens they may be loosed and free, and 
" closing them to those who by his just judgment are bound 
on earth, that also in the heavens they may be bound and 
condemned. Eut since they who lay claim to the rank of 
episcopacy (roi/ tottov) use this saying, as being Peter, and as 
" having received the keys of the kingdom of the heavens from 

s On this distinction, founded on the exact words of the original, 
{RaaiKiia rwv ovpavwv,) Origen lays stress afterwards in explaining that 
herein lay the superiority of the promises to Peter to that addressed to 
the other Apostles in Matt, xviii. Peter binding in all the heavens, 
(eV TOis ovpavoTs,) they only in one, {iu ovpavcf.) 



152 



ON- THE PEOMISES TO PETEE. 



" the Saviour, and teach that what is bound, i. e. condemned, 
" by them, is bound in the heavens also, and that what has 

received forgiveness from them has been loosed in the 

heavens also, we must say that they speak soundly, if they 
" have the work or reality {ipyhv) on account of which it has 

been said to that first Peter {Ueiva ra llerpw), ' Thou art 
" Peter,' &c., and if their characters are such as that on them^ 

by Christ the Church is built, and that to them might rea- 

sonably be applied the saying, 'the gates of hell shall not 
" prevail against him that wishes to bind and loose.' But if 

he is bound with the cords of his sins, it is in vain that he 
" binds and looses. Perhaps also it might be said that it is 
" in the heavens of the wise man, i. e. in his virtues, that the 

wicked is bound ; and again, that in them the good is loosed, 

and every one who obtains pardon {dfj-vrjaTLap) for the sins 
" committed before he became good. Just as he who has no 
" cords of sins, no sins like cart-ropes, is not bound by God, 

so neither is he by any who is in the place of Peter (oo-ns 
^' av ij Uerpos.) But if any one who is not Peter, and who has 

not the qualities here mentioned, believes that he can bind 

on earth like Peter, so that what he binds is bound in the 
' ' heavens, and what he looses is loosed in the heavens, such 
" an one is puffed up, not knowing the meaning of the Scrip- 

tures, and being puffed up he has fallen into the snare of 

the Devil." 

^ In like manner, when commenting on Matt, xviii. 18, he ascribes 
the power of binding and loosing there spoken of to all who have 
thrice rebuked their erring brethren. 



SEEMON IIL 



St. Paul 



ACTS xxii. 21. 

DePAET, rOE I WILL SEKD THEE FAK HElfCE UI^TO 

THE Gentiles. 

In recurring I trust not unfitly on this day^ to the 
consideration of the three great Saints and Apostles of 
the Christian Church, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John, 
the thoughts of some will perhaps recur to the three 
original disciples of our Lord, with the mention of whom 
I opened these discourses. The first has been already 
spoken of. But when we come to the second, the con- 
tinuity vanishes. Unlike his two fellow-disciples, James 
the son of Zebedee is suddenly called away without 
leaving a trace behind to justify the exalted place which 
he occupied above his brother Apostles, and in his stead 
we find one born out of due season, not only not belong- 
ing to the circle of the original Three, or even of the 
Twelve, but in all the circumstances of his education, 
his calling, and his life, most unlike to all of them. 

I am not now going to dwell on the thoughts which 
this substitution suggests ; such coincidences are often 
more fanciful than real, not to speak of the handle 
which they afibrd to cavil at the undoubted truths 
with which they are confounded. 

* Preached on the Feast of All Saints, 1846. 



154 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



Still though the connexion between St. Paul and 
James the brother of John is immaterial to the general 
argument, I know not how we could find a truer point 
of view from which to regard the rise of the great 
Apostle of the Gentiles, than by placing ourselves in 
the position of the early Church mourning over the 
untimely death of the eldest of the Sons of Thunder. 
It was not only that now for the first time a chasm 
had been made in the original apostolical brother- 
hood never to be again filled up on earth, that one of 
those who were to " sit on twelve thrones judging the 
" twelve tribes of Israel " had passed away, without 
seeing with his bodily eyes the coming of the Lord : 
but also that a change had come over the general 
aspect of the whole Christian society. Jerusalem was 
no longer the exclusive centre of the new faith ; the 
Church was no longer one with the Synagogue j new 
wants had arisen which no natural experience of the 
fishermen of Galilee was able to supply ; the children 
were come to the birth and there was not strength to 
bring forth : even Peter withdrew^ and separated him- 
self from the very emergency which he had been the 
chief instrument in bringing to pass ; the framework of 
the early Church, which twelve years before had seemed 
instinct with immortal vigour, now appeared to be 
breaking up and passing away before a mightier spirit 
which it was unable to comprehend : far ofi" beyond 
the confines of the Holy Land, in the purely Gentile 
city of Antioch, the capital of the Grecian kingdom, 
was growing up a new body of prophets which threat- 
ened to throw the older societies of Palestine into 



^ Gal. ii. 12. 



ni.] 



ST. PATJI. 



155 



shade ; a n^w name was given to the disciples^ of 
which the very^ form indicated its Roman origin, 
and which so long offended against the feelings of 
the earliest converts that down to the very close of 
the apostolical age the great mass of believers still 
shrank from adopting it. 

And now who was the new teacher round whom 
these tendencies of dangerous error, as they would have 
been deemed by some, this unfolding of divine truth as 
it was deemed by others, gradually fixed themselves ? 
We are not left to conjecture to know the feelings 
with which this question was asked by the more timid 
or the more prejudiced of the great bulk of the Jewish 
Christians. ''Who was this pretending to the name 
''of an Apostle, yet 'unknown by face to the Churches 
"'of Judaea — 'unknown to the circle of those who 
"'had seen the Lord Jesus,^ — with no authority for 
" his teaching, human or divine, — of Gentile life if 
" not of Gentile birth, — a renegade to the faith of 
"his fathers, 'teaching^ the Jews which are among 
" ' the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they 
" ' ought not to circumcise their children, nor to walk 
" ' after the customs.' 

Such was the image which we learn from the Acts 
and Epistles to have been the Jewish conception of 

<^ The name " Cbristianus " whicla was first given to the disciples at 
Antioch is never used in the New Testament except as applied to them 
by others, as in the place where its origin is mentioned, Acts xi. 26, 
in the speech of Agrippa, Acts xxvi. 28, and in 1 Pet. iv. 16. " If 

any man suffer [before the Koman magistrates] as a Christian." 

^ Gal. i. 22 ; 1 Cor. ix. 1 ; Acts xxi. 21. 

« Acts xxi. 21. For the fuller exposition of the misrepresentations 
of St. Paul see the Essay on the Judaizers. 



156 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



St. Paul. But there were others even then, wh.o were 
ready to glorify God when they heard that there was 
"one preaching the faith wkich once he destroyed^;" 
and now after the lapse of so many hundred years we 
may still be allowed to ask the question even with a 
deeper interest, " Who was this founder of a new 
"epoch, in the Christian religion? Who was it to 
" whom a greater prominence is given in the New 
" Testament than to any one else save our Lord Him- 
"self? Who was this to whom, in the most peculiar 
" and solemn mode, our Lord revealed Himself on 
" earth, after His Ascension, — for whom not merely 
" the laws of the world of nature, but the order and 
" continuity of the world of grace seemed to be sus- 
" pended and interrupted?" 

Whatever difficulty there may be in answering this 
question certainly does not arise from the absence of 
materials. Unlike in this respect to the Apostle of 
wbom I last spoke to you, there are very few charac- 
ters in ancient history of which we know so much as 
we do of St. Paul, none perhaps in the Sacred Volume 
with the exception of the Psalmist King, who in this 
as in many other respects holds a place in the older 
dispensation analogous to that of the Gentile Apostle 
in the new. His very form and manner, — his personal 
feelings and affections — the advance of j^ears from the 
prime of manhood to old age — are all reflected to us in 
th.e Acts and in his letters with, a liveliness and mi- 
nuteness of detail which, have always furnished to the 
Christian apologist one of the best defences of the au- 
thenticity of Christian history. Much of the argument 



f Gal. i. 22. 



in.] 



ST. PAUL. 



157 



of Paley's Evidences must change its value with the 
state of feeling and reasoning in different ages of the 
world. The argument of the Horse Paulinse will stand 
fast for all ages alike. 

In examining what this character was it is not ne- 
cessary to go back to the times before his conversion. 
It was this which was his birthday into the world's 
history. He might no doubt have been the head of the 
Pharisaic faction in the last expiring struggles of his 
nation; he might have rallied round him the nobler 
spirits of his countrymen, and by his courage and pru- 
dence have caused Jerusalem to hold out a few months 
or years more against the army of Titus. Still at best 
he would have been a Maccabseus or a Gamaliel, and 
what a difference to the whole subsequent fortunes of 
the world between a Maccabseus and a Paul, between 
the Jewish. Rabbi and the Apostle of the Gentiles ! 
It was not till the scales fell off from his eyes after 
the three days' stupor^, till the consciousness of his 
great mission awakened all his dormant energies, that 
we really see what he was. That Divine providence 
(which, as he himself^ tells us, had "already sepa- 
" rated him from his mother's womb") had no doubt 
overruled the circumstances of his earlier education 
for the great end to which he was afterwards called ; 
in him, as in similar cases, the natural faculties were 
by his conversion " not unclothed but clothed upon 
the glory of Divine grace was shewn here as always 
not by repressing and weakening the human character, 
but by bringing it out for the first time in its full 

s " He was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink." 
Acts ix. 9 ; compare 2 Cor. xii. 1. ^ Gal. i. 15. 



158 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



vigour. He was still a Jew ; the zeal of his ancestral 
tribe ^ which had caused him "to ravin as a wolf in 
"the morning^^ of his life, still glowed in hiis veins 
when he "returned in the evening to divide the spoil" 
of the mightier enemy whom he had defeated and 
bound ; and in the unwearied energy and self-devotion, 
no less than the peculiar intensity of national feeling, 
which mark his wbole life and writings, we discern 
the qualities which the Jewish people alone of all the 
nations then existing on the earth could have fur- 
nished. But there were other elements which his con- 
version developed into life besides the mere enthusiasm 
of the Jew shared equally with him by St. Peter. I 
would not lay stress on the Grecian culture which 
he might have received in the schools of Tarsus^, 
or the philosophical tone which we know to have cha- 
racterized the lectures of Gamaliel, though doubtless 
these had their share in the formation of his sub- 
sequent character ; nor yet would I insist on the dif- 
ference of intellectual power, great as it seems to have 
been, between his mind, and that of James and Peter 
and John. But whatever had been in former ages 
that remarkable union of qualities which had from the 
earliest times constituted the chosen people into a link 
between the East and the West, that was now in the 
highest degree exemplified in the character of Paul. 

» Gen, xlix. 27. 

^ For the schools of Tarsus, see the often-quoted passage in Strabo, 
(xiv. p. 673,) expressing their superiority even to those of Athens and 
Alexandria. And for the Talmudic traditions of the Gentile tenden- 
cies of Gamahel, agi-eeing with the tolerant spirit of his speech in the 
Acts, so ahen to the usual rigidity of his sect, see Tholuck on the Cha- 
racter of St. Paul, (Eng. Trans., p. 17. 26.) 



III.] 



ST. PAUL. 



159 



Those historical anticipations of the Grecian forms of 
thought and feeling which, have so often struck the 
classical student of the Old Testament ; those prophe- 
tical aspirations after a wider and more comprehensive 
system to which tlie Apostle so often refers in what he 
calls the Yerj bold^" expressions of Isaiah, reached 
their highest pitch, although under a different form, 
not only in his mission, but in himself. Never before 
or since have the Jew and Gentile so completely met 
in one single person, — not, as in Josephus and Philo, 
by mere imitation, — not, as in the Jews of later times, 
by the destruction of the older element, — but by an 
absolute though, unconscious fusion of the two toge- 
ther ; not founding a new system, but breathing a 
new spirit into that which already existed, and which 
only needed some such Divine impulse to call it into 
that fulness of life, which had been stunted only, not 
destroyed. He knew nothing, it may be, of those phi- 
losophers and historians with whom we are so familiar, 
nor can we expect to find in him the peculiar graces 
of Athenian genius ; yet it is in the dialectical skill ™ 
of Aristotle, the impassioned appeals of Demosthenes, 
the complicated sentences of Thucydides, far more 
than in the language of Moses or Solomon or Isaiah, 
that the form and structure of his arguments finds its 
natural parallel. He had never studied, it may be, 
or, if he had, would hardly have discerned those finer 
feelings of humanity of which the germs existed in 

1 Eom. X. 20. 

As a few out of many instances of this unconscious parallelism 
to Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Thucydides, may be given, (1.) Eom. 
vii. 7—23 ; 2 Cor. viii. 13, 14 ; (2.) 2 Cor. xi. 22—31 ; (3.) 2 Cor. iv. 
8, 9, and the digressions in Eph. iii. 2 — iv. 1 ; 1 Tim. i. 4—19. 



160 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



Greece and Rome, and iiave from them been preserved 
to modern Europe, but bow remarkably are tbey ex- 
emplified in bis own character ! What is that probing 
of the innermost recesses of the human ° heart and con- 
science, — ^so unlike the theocratic visions of the older 
prophets, — but the apostolical reflexion of the prac- 
tical, individual, psychological spirit of the western 
philosophies? What is that singular union of self- 
respect with respect and deference ^ to others which 
distinguishes his more personal addresses to his con- 
verts, but the anticipation of the refined and polished 
courtesy which has been ever esteemed the peculiar 
product of European civilization ? What is that capa- 
city for throwing himself into the position and feel- 
ings of others, — that becoming "all things to all 
" menP," which his enemies called worldly prudence, 
— that " transferring^ of arguments" to his own person, 
which lends such vigour to the Epistles to Rome and 
to Corinth, — that intense sympathy in the strength of 
which, as has been truly said, he *had a thousand 
friends, and loved each as his own soul, and seemed to 
live a thousand lives in them, and died a thousand 
deaths when he must quit them,' which "suffered 
"when the weaker brother suffered ^,^' which would 
not allow him to " eat meat whilst the world standeth 
"lest he make his brother to offend'' — what was all 
this but the effect of God's blessing on that boundless 
versatility of nature which had formed the especial 
mark of the Grecian mind for good and evil in all 

" As in Kom. vii., viii. As in the Epistles to the Corinthians, 

Philippians, and Philemon. p 1 Cor. ix. 22 ; see Essay on the 

Judaizers. i Eom. vii. 7 — 23 ; 1 Cor. iv. 6 ; vii. 1 ; viii. 1 — 6. 

' 2 Cor. xi. 29 ; 1 Cor. viii. 13. 



ST. PAUL. 



161 



ages? what was it but tlie significant maxim of the 
Koman poet, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum 
"puto," transfigured for the first time in the hea- 
venly radiance of truth and holiness ? 

II. It will not be supposed that in this brief view 
of the outward aspect of St. PauFs character I have 
attempted to give a complete analysis of it. I have 
purposely confined myself to those natural and moral 
gifts which as they were practically called into exist- 
ence by and for the work which he was to perform, 
can only through and in that work be fully understood. 
There is perhaps no feature of the apostolical age 
which is more difficult for us to comprehend than the 
immense importance attached by St. Paul to so obvi- 
ous a truth as the admission of the Gentiles into the 
Christian Church, still more the furious opposition 
by which its first announcement was met. Yet so it 
was. Other questions occupied the attention of the 
first dawn and of the final close of the apostolic age, 
but the one question above all others which absorbed 
its mid-day prime, — which is the key to almost all the 
Epistles, which is the one subject of almost the whole 
history of the Acts, — was not the foundation, not the 
completion of the Christian Church, but its universal 
difiusion ; the destruction not of Paganism, not of 
Gnosticism, but of Judaism. He therefore who stood 
forward at this juncture as the champion of this new 
truth at once drew the whole attention of the Christian 
world to himself — every other Apostle recedes from our 
view — east and west, north and south, from Jerusalem 
to Rome, from Macedonia to Melita, we hear of no- 
thing, we see nothing but St. Paul and his opponents. 

M 



162 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



It is only by bearing this steadily in mind that we 
can rigbtly conceive tbe nature of the conflict. He 
was not like a missionary of later times, whose great 
work is accomplished if he can add to the number of 
his converts ; he was this, but he was much more than 
this ; it was not the actual conversions themselves, but 
the principle which every conversion involved ; not 
the actual disciples whom he gained, but he himself 
who dared to make them disciples, that constitutes 
the enduring interest of that life-long struggle. It 
was not merely that he reclaimed from Paganism the 
Grecian cities of Asia Minor, but that at every step 
which he took westward from Palestine he tore up the 
prejudice of ages. It was not merely that he cast out 
the false spirit from the damsel at Philippi, but that 
when he set his foot on the farther shores of the 
^gean sea, religion for the first time ceased to be 
Asiatic, and became European, It was not merely 
that at Athens he converted Dionysius and Damaris, 
but that there was seen a Jew standing in the court of 
the Areopagus, and appealing to an Athenian audience, 
as children of the same Father, as worshippers, though 
unconsciously, of the same God. It was not that at 
Rome he made some impression more or less perma- 
nent ^ on the slaves of the imperial palace, but that a 
descendant of Abraham recognised in the dense masses 
of that corrupt metropolis a field for his exertions as 
sacred as in the courts of the Temple of Jerusalem. It 
was not the Homan governor or the Ephesian mob, 
but the vast body of Judaizing Christians which was 
his real enemy; not the worshippers of Jupiter and 



» Phil. iv. 22. 



m.J ST. PAUL. 163 

Diana, but those wlio made their boast of Moses and 
claimed to be disciples of Cephas. The conflict with 
Paganism was indeed the occasion of those few invalu- 
able models of missionary preaching which are pre- 
served to us in his speeches ; but it is the conflict with 
Judaism which forms the one continuous subject of 
that far more elaborate and enduring record of his 
teaching which is preserved to us in his Epistles. At 
every step* of his progress he is dogged by his im- 
placable adversaries, and at every step, as he turns to 
resist them, he flings back those words of entreaty, of 
rebuke, of warning, which have become the treasures 
of the Christian Church for ever. They deny his au- 
thority, they impugn his motives, they raise the watch- 
word of the law and of circumcision, and the result is 
to be found in those early Epistles to Corinth, to Ga- 
latia, and to Rome ^ which have once and for ever laid 
down what an Apostle is, and what he is not, what are 
the limits and what the extent of Christian liberty, 
which have asserted in a form which, if startling now, 
was assuredly not less startling then, the great princi- 
ple, " That man is justified by faith without the works 
^' of the law/' They harass him in his imprisonment 
at Eome, they blend their Jewish notions with the 
wilder theories of Oriental philosophy, and there rises 
before him in the Epistles to Ephesus, Colossse, and 
Philippi, the majestic vision of the spiritual Temple 
which is to grow out of the ruins of the old, of that 

* See Essay on the Judaizers. 
See especially (1.) 1 Cor. ix, 1 — 7 ; 2 Cor. x. — xii. ; Gal. i. 1 ; ii. 
10 ; (2.) 1 Cor. viii., x. ; Gal. iv. 10 ; v. 1 ; vi. 7 ; Eom. xiv. ; (3.) 1 Cor. 
i. 30 ; Kom. iii. 20 ; viii. 30 ; Gal. ii. 16 ; iii. 29. 



164 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



Divine head of tlie whole race of man, before whom all 
temporary and transient rites, all lower forms of wor- 
ship and philosophy fade away, in whom in the fulness 
of times all things were gathered together in one^. 
They rise once more in the Asiatic Churches ; all Asia 
is turned away from him ; his own companions have 
forsaken him ; he stands almost alone, under the sha- 
dow of impending deaths. But it is the last effort of 
a defeated and desperate cause. The victory is already 
gained, and in the three Epistles to Titus and Timo- 
theus we may consent to recognise the last accents of 
the aged Apostle, now conscious that his contest is 
over; some forebodings^ indeed we catch in them of 
that dark storm which was about to sweep within the 
next few years over the Christian and Jewish world 
alike ; but their general tone is one of calm repose — 
the mid-day heat is passed away — the shades of evening 
are beginning to slope, — the gleam of a brighter sky 
is seen beyond, — and with the assured conviction that 
the object of his life was fully accomplished, that J u- 
daism, though for a time it might still linger on, could 
never regain its hold on the Christian Church so long 
as the world lasts, he might well utter the words 
on which seventeen centuries have now set their in- 
disputable seal, " I have fought the good fight, I have 
" finished my course, I have kept the faith 

III. Such was the work of St. Paul. Others may 
have had some share in it; Peter prepared the way 

^ See especiaUy Eph. ii. 19—22 ; iv. 11—16 ; Col. i. 15—27 ; ii. 9 ; 
Phil. ii. 6—10. y See 2 Tim. i. 15 ; iv. 10, 11, 7, 8. 

^ 1 Tim. iv. 1-6 ; 2 Tim. iii. 1—6. » 2 Tim. iv. 7. 



m.] 



ST. PATJL. 



165 



for it — it was hallowed by the sanction of John, — but 
still it was emphatically what he himself calls it, the 
Gospel of Paul and of Paul alone. Had it not been 
for some such timely intervention, all future genera- 
tions must have entered Christianity through the gate 
of Judaism, the peculiar usages of an Oriental nation 
must have been hopelessly blended with the ordinances 
of the Universal Church. But God's purposes were 
not thus to be narrowed; with the preaching of St. 
Paul began that mighty change which does indeed 
justify the pre-eminence given in the Sacred Volume 
to his conversion above every other human event 
which it records. Henceforward the Church and the 
world became co-extensive; other evils may hinder 
the diffusion of Christianity, but not the limits of a 
local and national worship ; other restrictions may be 
imposed on the freedom of the human race, but the 
yoke of Judaism never ; other forms may be assumed 
by the spirit of bigotry and superstition, but from its 
earlier province it is utterly expelled: the most exclu- 
sive zealot will never again vecture to confine the pri- 
vileges of the true religion to a single nation ; the 
most ardent admirer of ancient usages and external 
forms will never again dare to insist on the universal 
necessity of circumcision. 

Truly, even if this were all, St. Paul would well 
deserve, according to the fervent eulogium of Chry- 
sostom^, the glorious name of " the Heart of the 

world." But did St. Paul's work indeed end with 
his own life? are we to reverse the judgment of his'' 
contemporaries, and say that while his bodily pre- 

^ First Homily on Epistle to the Eomans. 2 Cor. x. 10. 



166 ST. PATJL. [seem. 

sence was miglity and powerful, his letters are weak 
" and contemptible ? or may we not rather believe 
that in a sense higher than Chrysostom ever dreamt 
of, the pulses of that mighty heart are still the pulses 
of the world^s life, still beat in these later ages with 
even greater force than ever ? 

There is indeed no need to confine the operations of 
his teaching to any time or country whatever ; even 
in periods of the darkest ignorance and of the nar- 
rowest superstition, the spark of spiritual life and free- 
dom must have been kept alive in Europe by those 
thirteen Epistles to an ^extent which we cannot easily 
calculate. Still if there is any purpose in the study of 
Scripture it is surely not too much to presume that 
a vast additional impulse must have been given to the 
peculiar teaching and spirit of St. Paul, when for the 
first time almost for fifteen hundred years his Epistles 
were again read with all the zest of newly-discovered 
works ; when his words were again made the watch- 
words of parties, of schools, of nations, with an inten- 
sity of feeling and a conviction of their truth, which 
however perverted or exaggerated it might be, had not 
existed since the age when they were first uttered ; 
when in the great men, whom the convulsions of the 
sixteenth century produced on either side, the one 
character which they have always as it were uncon- 
sciously suggested to their admirers is that of the 
Apostle of the Gentiles. 

But it is not necessary to refer to any unconscious 
instinct or doubtful analogy of an excited age ; it is an 
inevitable result of the very nature of things and the 
course of events that for the last three hundred years 



m.] 



ST. PAUL. 



167 



the example and teaching of St. Paul must have a 
meaning for us which it could not have had for those 
who went before. 

1. When last I addressed you from this place, I 
spoke of the simple enthusiasm and childlike faith 
which were at once the especial characteristic and the 
especial privilege of the Middle Ages ; whatever other 
perplexities may have existed, they were not such 
as resulted from novel and complicated relations of 
thought or of society. But no sooner did that older 
state of things begin to crumble away before the new 
characters, the new enquiries, the new wants which 
rushed in like a deluge with the opening of the six- 
teenth century^ and have more or less agitated the 
mind of Europe ever since, than the question at once 
arose, " Can this be reconciled with Christianity or 
" can it not ? " It is unhappily no imaginary difficulty 
which here presents itself. We know only too well 
how the love of truth and the love of goodness have 
been constantly set in array one against another, how 
piety and wisdom have almost regarded each other as 
natural enemies, how often the promoters of the social 
and intellectual improvement of mankind have re- 
garded all high and pure devotion with indifference 
if not with hostility, how those who really care for 
religion have either stood aloof altogether from the 
great cause of human progress, or have joined it only 
with a blind and one-sided zeal. 

It surely is of no slight importance that the history 
of the first age of Christianity should present us with 
one undoubted instance of a character which unites all 
the freedom and vigour of a great Reformer with all 



168 



ST. PAUL. 



the humbleness and holiness and self-denial of a great 
Apostle. If any one thinks on the one hand that wide 
comprehensiveness and removal of restraints is un- 
christian, or on the other hand that Christianity is 
servile, degrading, superstitious, let him reflect that 
St. Paul threw down the greatest barriers that ever 
divided man from man, not in spite of his being a 
Christian, but because he was a Christian ; not because 
he had forgotten, but because he never could forget 
the heavenly vision on the road to Damascus; not in 
obedience to a rebellious human reason, but because 
those solemn words were always sounding in his ears, 
" Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me ? " And as 
St. PauPs life is a sanction of such unequal struggles 
against the apathy or the corruption of men, so also is 
it a pledge of their final triumph. That blessed Apo- 
stle, whose memory is now revered by every sect and 
party throughout the world, was condemned by the 
most ancient of the ancient Churches as " a ring-leader 
" of sedition and heresy"^;" that teaching which has 
in later times with hardly an exaggerated estimate 
been actually called " the Gospel,^^ was treated by his 
own contemporaries as the most fatal delusion; that 
new name by which the Gentile disciples were first 
called in Antioch, and which for so long even Apo- 
stolic lips feared to utter, is now esteemed as the 
most exalted name which can be given to any human 
being; that mixed society which he ventured to up- 
hold, but with which ^ Peter and Barnabas and the 
mother Church of all the world feared to hold any in- 
tercourse, was in the next century enshrined for ever 



^ Acts xxiv. 5. 



« Gal. ii. 12. 



m.] 



ST. PAri. 



169 



in the solemn confessions of Christendom under the 
name of the " Holy Catholic Church ; " that blessed 
communion of "All Saints^' which is this day cele- 
brated through almost the whole Christian world, was 
first announced by him as the most startling novelty 
which the ears of men could conceive. There may 
be times when truth and goodness are so universally 
triumphant that we must be guided by the adage of 
Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus ; " but 
there are also times, and the time of St. Paul was 
one, when it is no less needful and no less comforting 
to remember the opposite truth, ''Athanasius contra 
" mundum." 

2. Yet again, when at last after a long interval God's 
Providence opened to the human mind an horizon 
wider than the mere circle of half- formed ecclesiasti- 
cal literature to which it had been before accustomed, 
when for the first time the works of Pagan art and 
genius began to be studied in Europe, when new 
worlds in the earth and in the heavens were opening 
to the eyes of science, again the question must have 
arisen with still greater earnestness, " Are these also 
" capable of being brought within the sphere of Chris- 
" tianity, or must we choose between secular and reli- 

gious knowledge, between this world and the next?'^ 
We know also that this is no trivial question, least of 
all in this place where the very course of our education 
brings us into contact with those very subjects which 
most suggest the enquiry. It is no answer to say that 
religion has a sphere of its own, and that worldly 
knowledge may be taught by worldly men. The con- 
viction of the truth of Christianity rests far more than 



170 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



may at first sight appear on tlie conviction of its uni- 
versality, and if it could be proved that large provinces 
of human thought, important elements of human ad- 
vancement were altogether foreign if not hostile to its 
teaching, then far more than by any direct attack on 
its outward evidences, would its hold be loosened over 
the minds of men; it might be held to have been 
a religion, it could hardly be practically held to be 
the religion of the world. Thanks be to God, the Scrip- 
tures teem with a thousand proofs that no such alter- 
native is offered to us, and none perhaps is more con- 
vincing than the lesson forced upon us by the work 
and character of St. Paul, Even in detail we may 
surely be allowed to see a significance in those traits 
which do at once connect a Christian Apostle with 
those immortal nations in whose works, as I just now 
said, our studies here almost compel us to take so deep 
an interest. We may surely dwell with satisfaction on 
the fact that a Hebrew of the Hebrews did not 
think it a profanation of the speeches and epistles 
which were to guide the Church in all future ages, to 
quote from^ Menander, Aratus, and Epimenides, to 
point his argument by allusions ^ to the green garland 
of the Isthmian games, to the gorgeous spectacle of the 

f 1 Cor. XV. 33 ; Acts xvii. 28 ; Tit. i. 12. 

s It is almost needless to refer to the " corruptible crown of those 
*' who strove for the mastery " at Corinth, the green pine of classical 
ages which still clothes the plains of the Isthmus : (1 Cor. ix. 25) : as 
it is in the scene of the triumphal procession at Eome, with its in- 
cense and sacrifice, its solemn trophies of victory and its victims 
doomed to death, that we at once recognise the train of images which 
follows on the appropriation of that greatest of earthly associations 
to the Apostle's triumph in Christ {epia/x^evaduTi.) (2 Cor. ii. 14.) 



m.] ST. PAUL. 171 

Capitolian triumpli ; that a descendant of tlie royal 
tribe of Saul, a citizen of the nation that owned no 
earthly sovereign but the house of David, should have 
assumed a name which recalls to us the days not of 
Gilboa but of Cannse^ — should have shielded himself 
from Jewish^ persecution under the privileges of a 
Roman citizen — should have acknowledged in "the 
" minister of God " who " bore the sword on the 
Roman seat of justice an authority no less Divine than 
that which had once been enthroned on the holy hill of 
Zion. But it is not on any mere details, remarkable as 
they may be, that we need rest the Divine sanction 
hereby given to Gentile studies. If any thing that I 
have said of St. Paul's work and life be true, then 
surely the conversion of the nations must have em- 
braced something far beyond the mere outward fact ; 
it was not their bodies only, but their hearts, and 
minds, and spirits that were to be saved and sanctified ; 
man may " strike thrice and stay," but it is the will of 
God that he should " strike till he have utterly con- 
" sumedj" and therefore it is with no fond presump- 
tion, but with a humble Christian confidence that we in 
this place may feel when wrapt in the study of Pagan 
literature, of European art and science, that, however 
startling this contrast may seem, it is not so startling 
as that first event in which it virtually had its origin, 
under the express commands of Him who said to His 
chosen Apostle even in the courts of His most holy 
temple, " Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto 
the Gentiles j." 

^ " Saul, who is also called Paul.'" Acts xiii. 9. ' Acts xxii. 

25 ; Eom. xiii. 1 ; xv. 11. i Acts xxii. 21. 



172 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



3. But it is not only on your present studies that 
St. Paul's life and teaching may throw so cheering a 
light; it is even more on all those various occupa- 
tions of your after life, on that vast outer world, into 
which before three years are over almost every one 
of you will have passed, to influence or to be influenced 
by it. There was a long period of European history 
when all distinct professions and callings either slum- 
bered altogether, or else reposed under the shadow of 
the great ecclesiastical institutions which remained 
standing amidst the wreck of the Empire. But there 
came a time when, as at the voice of the Archangel's 
trumpet, all these several elements of societ}^ were 
suddenly called into a new existence; new relations, 
new populations, new responsibilities rose up and have 
ever since been rising np on every side, for which 
the old frame-work of society furnishes no adequate 
place, on which the old associations and restraints 
exercise no hallowing influence. To meet this want, to 
acknowledge, enlighten, sanctify, these new elements of 
individual and social life, is indeed a great task, yet 
surel}^ not more hopeless than that which was set before 
St. Paul ; — and which he accomplished. Is it too much 
to say that, in their measure, the vast mass of secular 
professions, sciences, and pursuits, are now to the old 
forms of religious and ecclesiastical life from which 
they have been dissevered what the vast mass of hea- 
then nations were to the commonwealth of Israel in his 
time ? that to all such portions of the human race, — 
whensoever, and b}^ whatsoever barriers they are, or 
appear to be, divided from that fulness of communion 
with God to which they are all alike entitled, — St. Paul 



HI.] ST. PAUL. 173 

is called to declare, whether in the first, the sixteenth, 
or the nineteenth century, that they are ''no more 
" strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the 
"saints and of the household of God^?" Is it too 
much in short to say that, as he was the Apostle of the 
Gentiles then, so he is the Apostle of the Laity now ; 
that, as he proclaimed then that in the great matters 
of human salvation there is no difference between Jew 
and Greek, so now he proclaims, as he did in fact 
proclaim even then, that " every man in the calling 
" wherein he is called is therein to abide with God;'* 
that " whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, 
" we can and ought to do all to the glory of God 

We cannot of course be indifferent as to what pro- 
fession we choose ; one far more than another may 
help or retard our heavenly progress, one far more than 
another may be suited to our peculiar faculties or cha- 
racters. But it is when we have chosen that it becomes 
of the utmost importance to remember that none is in 
itself nearer to God than another ; that the Church, 
according to St. Paul, is not one order or institution, 
however sacred, but the whole body of Christian be- 
lievers with all their various gifts acting and sympa- 
thizing for and with each other ; that every member of 
the Church " in his vocation ^ and ministry,'* no less 
than the highest primate or pontiff, is called to be the 
soldier and servant of Christ ; that, to use the words of 
a great religious leader of the age of which I just now 
spoke, and whose reverence for ecclesiastical authority 
is beyond all dispute, " It is the Devil's master-art to 

^ Eph. ii. 19. 1 1 Cor. vii. 24; x. 31. Second CoUect for 

Good Friday. " Ignatius Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits. 



174 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



" persuade us tliat any profession would be to us holier 
" than our own;" that in all the variety of callings 
and pursuits amongst which you may be thrown, there 
is no corner too dark, no occupation too secular, to es- 
cape the influence of Christianity ; no station in which 
the great battle of our age against ignorance and sin 
may not by jour selfish indolence or your devoted 
energy be retarded or advanced. 

4. But after ail, the one great reply to all these 
questions, the one great lesson of St. Paul's teaching 
still remains behind, in the innermost springs of his 
own individual life. 

Unlike the other Apostles he had been called alone, 
by no gradual preparation, with no sympathizing bro- 
thers or companions, " not of men, neither by men, 
" but by the immediate revelation of Jesus Christ," 
and " as one born out of due time," " having been 
" before a blasphemer, and persecutor, and injurious 
he stood before the heavenly vision " seeing no man," 
knowing and feeling nothing in the whole world be- 
sides, save himself, and Jesus whom he had perse- 
" cuted." He looked upon all that he and his country, 
men had up to this moment held most sacred, — the 
descent from Abraham, the strict observance of out- 
ward acts, moral no less than ceremonial, prescribed by 
the law — he looked upon all these, and he knew by his 
own experience that he had tried them all and found 
them wanting : " circumcised the eighth day, of the 
" stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew 
of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, as 
" touching the righteousness of the law blameless : if 



« Gal. ii. 1 ; 1 Cor. xv. 8 ; 1 Tim. i. 13. 



m.] 



ST. PAUL. 



175 



any man had whereof to trust in all these things, 
he moreP:" yet "he counted them all for loss;" he 
felt that " circumcision availed nothing, nor uncircum- 
" cision," that " by the works of the law should no 
" flesh be justified/' "yea that he had not known sin 
" except the law had said, ^Thou shalt not covet 1/ 
One word there still remained in the sacred vocabulary 
of his countrymen, — one principle, wrought into the 
very inmost being of man, which had been for years 
despised or neglected, not in the heaven above, nor in 
the depth beneath, but " very nigh^, even in his heart 
" and in his mouth," and that was ''the word of faith 
" which he preached/' That Faith, that trust in the 
unseen and eternal, which even in the heathen world 

" Through many a dreary age 
''Upbore whate'er of good and wise 
" Still liv'd in bard or sage" — 

which every Jew must have acknowledged to be the 
glory of his first ancestor Abraham, and the key-note 
of the Psalms of David, — was now to be aroused from 
its slumber of ages, was now to become in the hands of 
St. Paul " the likeness of a living creature so much 
mightier than it had ever been before, in as far as it 
was now directed to a new object, even to the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again for 
our jusiification. 

Such a principle, so seated in the inmost heart and 
will of man, so resting by its very nature on the un- 

p Phil. iii. 4. i Gal. v. 6 ; Kom. iii. 20 ; vii. 7. Eom. x. 8. 

* " The words of St. Paul are not dead words ; they ;are living 
" creatures, and have hands and feet." Luther, as quoted in Arch- 
deacon Hare'fi Notes to the Mission of the Comforter, (p. 449.) 



176 



ST. PAUL. [seem. 



seen and spiritual world, so containing in itself be- 
yond every other human motive, the necessary seed 
and germ of all holiness, love, and obedience, could 
not but become the natural and peculiar topic of him, 
to whom, as for the first time, the struggles of the in- 
ward conscience were fully revealed ; who in his efforts 
to be delivered from the bondage of the Mosaic law 
could hardly fail to assert the complete freedom of the 
human will, not only in the controversy of Jew with 
Gentile, but of man with himself and with God. 

Other aspects no doubt there are of St. Paul's teach- 
ing, and this great principle itself is merged in the 
great object of his mission to the Gentile world. Yet 
still, standing as it does in the very front of his chief 
Epistles, it is absent from hardly any, and is the basis 
implied in all ; and, as it is the principal, so also it is 
the peculiar, characteristic of his teaching. Doubtless 
both in the heathen and the Jewish world it had been 
to the extent of their knowledge understood and taught, 
and we see at once in the Gospel narrative that from 
the moment of our Lord's appearance on earth this 
must henceforward have been the work of God, to 
" 'believe on Him whom He hath sent." But to draw 
this out in all its various applications, to confront it 
with the claims of rival systems, to make it as it were 
the lever of the new moral world, — this was reserved 
for the especial ministrations of St. Paul. His teach- 
ing contains the innocent source even of those per- 
versions of the original Gospel, which have substituted 
Creeds of many articles for the two great Command- 
ments, or for the new Commandment, as the symbol of 
Christianity. The Living Person in whom we trust, not 



m.] 



ST. PAUL. 



177 



the system of precepts which we follow, or of dogmas 
which we receive, is the centre of the Christian society. 
The name by which religion in all subsequent times 
has been known is not an outward " ceremoniaP' i^pV' 
(TKeLo) as with the Greeks, nor an outward "restraint" 
(religio) as among the Romans, nor an' outward "law" 
as among the Jews ; it is by that far higher and deeper 
title, which it first received from the mouth of St. Paul, 
" the Faith." 

How this principle was applied at that period when 
it was again made the watchword of an awakening 
world, when nations and individuals once again rallied 
around it as the Article of a falling or a standing 
Church ; how deeply it must afiect every age and 
society where the struggles of the inward conscience 
are consciously felt and realized, opens many ques- 
tions on which this is not the place to enter at length, 
but still in which all of us, more or less, must bear a 
part. Even in its negative aspect it may well remind 
us again and again that it is on no outward circum- 
stance, however solemn, not even though it be as sacred 
as circumcision was to the Jews ; on no outward act, 
however correct, even though it be the deeds of that 
law which was " holy and just and good," but on 
the individual faith and conscience that the highest 
welfare of the human soul depends. Whatever and 
wherever we may be, all that is really essential must, 
if St. Paul's words are true, be still within our own 
reach ; our own individual souls are ours to save or to 
lose ; our own individual consciences can and must de- 
cide in the great matters of right and wrong, of life 
and death, of time and of eternity. 

N 



178 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



But the great and crowning lesson of St. PauPs 
teaching is lost upon us, if, while learning from him, 
as learn we must, the principles of entire freedom from 
all that is around or below us, we fail to learn the no 
less essential dependence on what is above us. IndiQ- 
pendent in some sense you must be of outward institu- 
tions, and of mere human opinion ; your own natural 
feelings of j^outh recommend it ; the course of the 
world, in which you will have to act, requires it ; 
Christ through the voice of His own holy Apostle 
sanctions it. But it seems to have been specially or- 
dered that he, who was to be so mighty a witness to 
the liberty of man, should have been a witness no less 
mighty to the power of Grod ; that he, who was so en- 
tirely removed from everything that was earthly or 
local as not* to "have known after the flesh even 
Christ Himself, yet should have been united in the 
very closest communion with Him in spirit. I have 
described up to this point the undoubted life and teach- 
ing of St. Paul, as I might have described the career 
of any other great benefactor to the human race, who 
was to be held up for our example. And now I would 
ask the question which is to receive its no less un- 
doubted answer from those of his Epistles whose genu- 
ineness has never yet, so far as I know, been disputed 
by the extremest criticism, whether of German re- 
search or French literature, — What was the principle 
by which through such a life he was animated ? What 
was the strength in which he laboured with such im- 
mense results ? 

We ma}^, if we will, represent him to have been an 

t 2 Cor. V. 16. 



III.] 



'sT. PAUL. 



179 



enthusiast, or his words to have lost their meaning for 
us, but we cannot pretend to doubt for one moment the 
full sincerity of his own belief that " the life which he 
" lived in the flesh he lived by the faith of the Son 
" of God, who died and gave Himself for him^." To 
believe in Christ crucified and risen, to serve Him 
on earth, to be with Him hereafter, — these, if we 
.may trust the account of his own motives by any 
human writer whatever, were the chief, if not the only 
thoughts, which sustained Paul of Tarsus through all 
the troubles and sorrows of his twenty years' conflict. 
" His sagacity, his cheerfulness, his forethought, his 
" impartial and clear-judging reason,^' all the natural 
elements of strong character which I have tried to set 
before you, are not indeed to be overlooked: but the 
more highly we exalt these in our estimate of his 
work, the larger share that we attribute to them in the 
performance of his mission, the more are we compelled 
to believe that he spoke the w^ords of truth and sober- 
ness, when he told the Corinthians that " last of all 
^' Christ was seen of him also that by " the grace 
" of God he became what he was," that " whilst he 
" laboured more abundantly than all, it was not he but 
" the grace of God that was in him.'' 

Some doubtless there must be in almost every Chris- 
tian congregation, and I trust here also, to whom such 
words of St. Paul will suggest a whole world of thought 
on which I have hardly ventured to touch ; some who, 
whilst I have been going over the outward glory of his 
life and the efiects of his teaching on the course of 
human history, will have felt that St. Paul himself still 



" Gal. ii. 20. 



^ 1 Cor. XV. 10. 



180 



ST. PAUL. 



[seem. 



remains to be described; that the interest of his out- 
ward conflict and victory fades into nothing before the 
interest of that inward conflict and inward peace which 
have made his Epistles the storehouse of comfort to 
thousands of humble believers, who know no more of 
the controversy of Jew and Gentile tban if it had 
never been. For them, it needs no formal words to 
set forth that life of his life which was ''hid with 
" Christ in God," and which must find a far deeper 
and truer explanation, — it may be, in their own per- 
sonal experience, — it may be, in what they have seen 
in others. For the rest of us, even for the most scep- 
tical or the most indifierent, it surely is not without 
instruction to feel that there is something in St. Paul's 
life beyond what we can understand, that there is a 
height veiled from our view because we are not fit 
to see it. We can trace the presence of a great mys- 
tery, even though we cannot comprehend it; we can 
be moved by the sight or sound of acts and words, 
even though we dare not imitate or adopt them for 
ourselves. If we see that a man so holy as St. Paul 
was yet penetrated with so deep a sense of his own sin 
and of his own need of God's forgiveness ; if one so 
wise and energetic as St. Paul should still feel that he 
owed all to " the grace of Christ strengthening him," 
what are we if such thoughts as these are utterly 
strange to us ! Or if, on the other hand, we can find 
something like a response to them, however faint, 
it surely is no presumptuous fancy, but the simple 
truth, that we are approaching, however remotely, to 
that standing place from which St. Paul moved the 
world ; in all our difficulties and temptations, we may, 



HI.] 



ST. PAUL. 



181 



in proportion as we thus approach it, rest assured, like 
him, that we are not the slaves of our own passions or 
prejudices, nor yet the victims of an unchangeable des- 
tiny, but that we may go on as he did advancing still 
in all Christian goodness, from youth to manhood, from 
manhood to old age, and in the end be more than con- 
querors through the selfsame living and eternal Saviour 
in whom he trusted. 

Let us realize thoughts like these, and then we 
shall indeed feel that St. PauFs Epistles may be read 
with a deeper than any mere theological interest ; we 
shall indeed enter more and more into the truth of his 
memorable words, not as the text of a worn-out contro- 
versy, but as the life of our inmost being, " That being 
"justified by faith we have peace with God, through 
" our Lord Jesus Christ." 



THE JUDAIZERS OF THE 
APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

It has often been remarked that truth and error keep pace 
with each other. Error is the shadow cast by truth, truth 
the bright side brought out by error. Such is the relation 
between the heresies and the apostolical teaching of the first 
century. The Gospels indeed, as in other respects, so in 
this, rise almost entirely above the circumstances of the 
time, but the Epistles are, humanly speaking, the result 
of the very conflict between the good and evil elements 
which existed together in the bosom of the early Christian 
society. As they exhibit the principles afterwards to be 
unfolded into all truth and goodness, so the heresies which 
they attack exhibit the principles which were afterwards to 
grow up into all the various forms of error, falsehood and 
wickedness. 

The energy the freshness, nay even the preternatural 
power which belonged to the one belonged also to the other. 
Neither the truths in the writings of the Apostles, nor the 
errors in the opinions of their opponents, can be said to 
exhibit the dogmatical form of any subsequent age. It is 
a higher and more universal good which is aimed at in 
the former; it is a deeper and more universal principle of 
evil which is attacked in the latter. Christ Himself, and 
no subordinate truths or speculations concerning Him, is 
reflected in the one ; Antichrist, and not any of the par- 
ticular outward manifestations of error which have since 

^ Through the whole of this Essay I have derived great assistance 
from the recent Essay of Thiersch on the Criticism of the Writings of 
the New Testament, as well as from the facts stated in the works 
of his opponents. 



THE JUDAIZEES OE THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



183 



appeared, was justly regarded by tlie Apostles as fare- 
shadowed in the other. 

Such being the case, it is obviously as impossible for 
these primitive heresies, as for the Divine truths which 
they opposed, to be comprehended under any one outward 
form, or ascribed to any merely local influence. And in 
point of fact any undue limitation of either has always 
resulted in an undue limitation of both. As those who 
have identified the opponents of the Apostles with some 
particular evil of their own day have also incurred the 
risk of degrading the Apostles themselves into the parti- 
sans of their own particular sect, so those who have traced 
the course of Gnosticism or Judaism in every object of the 
apostolical censures, have also turned those censures them- 
selves from universal lessons of instruction into attacks on 
evils long ago extinct. 

Still, as there is a sense in which the language of the 
Apostolical Epistles was coloured by the influences of the 
age, so we must expect to find that the heresies which 
called them forth were also clothed in a particular histo- 
rical form. And therefore, whilst a complete analysis of 
the principles of these heresies belongs to a wider field 
than can now be entered, it may not be without use 
to give at least so much of their outward appearance as 
may be necessary to explain the allusions in the sketch 
which has been attempted in the Sermons of the career of 
the Apostles themselves. 

It has been there stated that the true conflict of the 
Apostolical age was, to speak generally, not the founda- 
tion or completion but the universal diffusion of Christianity. 
To unfold this in its gradual stages ''in Jerusalem, and all 
" Judaea, in Samaria ^, and unto the utmost parts of the 

^ Acts i. 8. This verse, or at least the successive propagation of 
the Gospel as implied in it, gives the natural divisions of the Acts 
of the Apostles. 1. The preaching of Peter at Jerusalem, i. — v. 



184 THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

earth," beginning with the first intimations of it in the 
day of Pentecost, and ending with the preaching of the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, is the one thi^ead which connects 
together the whole history of the Acts. And although in 
the earliest and the latest of the Apostolical Epistles the 
marks of the conflict are not so visible as in those which 
occupy the centre of the period, yet even in St. James we 
may trace the first rise, and in St. John the gradual sub- 
siding of the storm which forms the whole atmosphere of 
St. Paul. Necessarily corresponding to this is the fact that 
of all the false systems or sects which the Apostles are 
called on to oppose, there is hardly one which is not con- 
nected more or less remotely with Judaism. The principle 
itseK which was involved, the mightier power of evil of 
which it was but the outward organ, has, so far as it is 
included within the range of the present volume, been 
already discussed; it yet remains to trace it through its 
several phases, to detect the various forms which it as- 
sumed, the opposite quarters which it occupied. 

It is not necessary here to enter upon the national feel- 
ing of the Jewish Church or nation itself as it existed be- 
fore it was brought into direct collision with Christianity, 
according to the picture which in its better side is pre- 
sented to us in the character of Peter and of James the 
Just, in its worse in the description of the Scribes and 
Pharisees in the Gospels, especially Matt, xxiii., and in the 
Epistle of St. James, and the end of the second chapter of 
St, Paul's Epistle to the Eomans (Rom. ii. 17 — 24.) In 
pait this is exhibited in difi'erent portions of this volume, 
in part another occasion may perhaps occur of exhibiting 
it more fully hereafter. It is not the nation of the Jews, 
but the sect of the Judaizers that have to be described, 

2. The preparation for the preaching of Paul by the diffusion of 
the Gospel through Judaea and Samaria, vi. — xii. 3. The preaching 
of Paul " to the uttermost parts of the earth," xiii. — xxviii. 



THE JTrDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 185 

and in so doing it will be convenient to consider them in 
the three successive stages into vrhich their history natu- 
rally falls. First, the period which coincides with the 
latter chapters of the Acts, from the fifteenth chapter to 
the end, and the six earliest Epistles of St. Paul, viz., 
those to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, and Eo- 
mans. Secondly, the period from the close of St. Paul's 
E-oraan imprisonment to the fall of Jerusalem. Thirdly, 
the period from that time to the close of the first century. 

It is not meant that this division thoroughly exhausts 
the subject. The Clementine Homilies and the writings 
of Justin Martyr sufficiently prove that a contest between 
Judaism and Christianity was still to be traced till the 
middle of the second century, and vestiges of Judaizing 
sects were to be found even in the time of Jerome. But 
it is the object of this Essay to confine itself, as strictly 
as the subject will admit, to the writings of the New Testa- 
ment, and to assume, as in the present state of our know- 
ledge is the safest as well as the most convenient course, 
the usual limits assigned to the intervals of time over which 
they severally extend, and of which the successive stages of 
development, rather than the chronological exactness of 
dates, is the matter of chief importance. 

I. EiEST Peeiod, from Acts xv. 1, to Acts xxviii. 

It was not till the universal character of the Christian 
religion became known from the preaching of St. Paul on 
his first journey that the great division of which we have 
now to speak first manifested itself amongst the disciples. 

Mrst rise of the Judaizers. 

Up to that time the idea of the Christian Church had been 
confined to the idea of a Jewish synagogue, distinguished 
indeed from all similar associations by its belief that Jesus 



186 THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

was the Christ, and by its purer morality and faith, but 
still entirely confined to God's ancient people. Within the 
range of the circumcision, whether in or out of Palestine, 
it was to witness the name of Christ and to proclaim the 
duty of renouncing in baptism the sins "of that untoward 
" generation'^," above all the one great sin of the Cruci- 
fixion ; but still its sphere was not more catholic than that 
of the Jewish race itself. To those indeed who watched 
with observant eyes the progress of the new revelation, 
a considerable shock must have been given to this notion, 
if not by the intimations in our Lord's teaching, and to 
a certain extent in that of Stephen and Philip, at least by 
the conversion of Cornelius, and of the Greeks at Antioch. 
But to the mass of the Jewish Christians even this great 
step was not decisive. Cornelius had indeed been received 
into the Christian society by baptism without any previous 
admission into the Jewish people by circumcision ; it was 
henceforth incontestably proved 'Hhat in every nation," 
whether Gentile or Israelite, "every man that feared God 
" and worked righteousness was accepted of Him" so far 
as to be forthwith enrolled amongst the members of the 
Christian synagogue. Yet after all it might be said that 
this was the exception only, not the rule. Even if circum- 
cision were deferred in such cases for a time, it might be 
insisted upon afterwards ; even if in their case it were 
altogether suspended, yet still — so long as the mass of 
the society partook of it, so long as the metropolis of the 
Church was at Jerusalem — a few interlopers here and there 
might well be overlooked or tolerated, as Araunah the 
Jebusite and Uriah the Hittite had been tolerated in the 
ancient times of the monarchy; they could exercise no im- 
portant influence in separating the Christian congregation 
from the body of the nation. 

But this illusion was at once dispelled when the tidings 

c Acts ii. 40. 



THE JTJDAIZEKS OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 187 

arrived not merely of a few isolated instances of conversion 
amongst the Roman soldiers at Caesarea, or the Greek set- 
tlers at Antioch, within, or at least only just beyond, the 
confines of the Holy Land, but of whole Gentile commu- 
nities in the heart of Asia Minor ; when it was announced 
at Jerusalem that two of the most distinguished members 
of the Christian society had been sent out by the prophets 
of Antioch for this very purpose ; that seeing how the Jews 
had judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life they 
''had turned" deliberately ''to the Gentiles;" that "He 
" who had wrought so effectually in Peter amongst the cir- 
" cumcision, had wrought effectually in Paul amongst the 
" uncircumcision ^ ;" that in short the Christian Church, in- 
stead of being as heretofore a nucleus of Jews with a sprink- 
ling of Gentiles, was henceforth to be a vast society of Gen- 
tiles with a sprinkling here and there of Jews. It was na- 
tural that at this discovery the suspicions of the Palestine 
Christians, which must have been long awakened, should 
have broken out into open hostility; they had temporised, 
it might be said, long enough, it was necessary at last to 
adopt some decisive measure which should stifle in the 
cradle this new movement which was carrying them they 
knew not whither, to consequences which those who had 
first set it on foot could never have anticipated; and ac- 
cordingly the account of the first Gentile mission is imme- 
diately followed in the Acts of the Apostles by the first 
mention of the Judaizers; no sooner have we heard that 
Paul and Barnabas had "rehearsed all that God had done 
" with them, and how He had opened the door of faith to 
" the Gentiles," than we are told^ that " certain men which 
" came down from Judaea taught the brethren and said, 
" ' Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye 
" cannot be saved.' " 



Acts xiii. 46 ; Gal. ii. 8. 



^ Acts xiv. 27; xv. 1. 



188 THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



Circumcision the Watchword of the Judaizers. 

In itself this was no more than would probably have been 
maintained a short time before by the Apostles themselves 
and by the Church of Jerusalem; even at that moment, as 
the context implies, it was regarded as an open question. 
But amongst the thousand instances which are perpetually 
recurring even in ordinary history, and which are brought 
before us with peculiar liveliness in the New Testament, of 
positions or modes of teaching which, according to the point 
of view from which they are taken up, may be regarded as 
the holiest truths or the most fatal errors, none is more 
striking than the maintenance of the necessity of circum- 
cision before and after the conversion of Cornelius. Other 
points there were no doubt on which the Judaizing Chris- 
tians may have at different times or places insisted, but this 
was always their main watchword. In Palestine itself, as 
we may gather from the accusations ^ against Stephen and 
from the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Temple and the Tem- 
ple service was the great bond of union ; but, when an ap- 
peal had to be made to the feelings of the whole Jewish race 
throughout the world, it necessarily rallied round that which 
they all had equally in common — the observances of the Law ; 
and of all these observances, great as might be the stress laid 
on the festivals and sabbaths, or on the distinction of clean 
and unclean meats, yet still the one essential, universal, in- 
dispensable sign of a Jew was the sign of the covenant which 
God had made with then- father Abraham in circumcision. 
Poreign amiies were not allowed to offer their services in de- 
fence of the holy city; foreign kings could not ally them- 
selves with princesses of the house of Herod, unless they 
submitted to this ceremony ^ ; was it to be borne that those 

f Acts vi. 13 ; Heb. ix. 1—7. ? Joseph. Ant. xx. 7, 1, 3. See 

Milman's Hist, of Christianity, i. p. 425. 



THE JTJDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 189 



who claimed to be the servants of the true Messiah should 
commence their career by breaking through the one bond of 
national union, and admitting to the closest of human inter- 
course those who had always been regarded ^ as " cut off 
" from the people of God?" 

And as this was the one point for which the Judaizers con- 
tended, so it was the one point on which the Apostles took 
their stand against them. Although they taught that the 
Temple with its worship was henceforth to be sought only in 
the spiritual house and royal priesthood^" of the whole 
Christian society, still they never'' scrupled to frequent its 
services. Although St. Paul spoke of the ''holy days and 
*' new moons, and sabbath days," the observation "of days 
" and months, and times and years V' as merely a shadow of 
things to come, still he did not hesitate himself to keep the 
feasts of the Passover and of Pentecost ™, and to the Romans 
he spoke of it as a thing indifferent whether "one man es- 
" teemed one day above another, or another esteemed every 
" day alike ^." "The kingdom of God," they well knew, 
"was not meat or drink °," but here again St. Paul would 
not " eat meat whilst the world standeth lest he should make 
" his brother to offend;" and the assembled Apostles and 
brethren at Jerusalem enjoined the Christians " to abstain 
" from meats offered to idols, and blood, and from things 
" strangled?." But on the point of circumcision they were 
immoveable, in proportion as their opponents were urgent. 
Both alike saw that all else might be conceded, and the real 
cause of Christian liberty be left untouched — that, if this 
were granted, all else must follow with it. And therefore, 
to their solicitations St. Paul " gave way by subjection, no, 
"not for an hour^i;" and, as if in direct antithesis to their 

^ Gen. xvii. 14; Ex. xxxi. 14. • 1 Pet. ii. 5, 9. ^ Acts ii. 

46 ; iii. 1 ; xxi. 26. i Gal. iv. 10 ; Col. ii. 16. Acts xviii. 

21 ; XX. 16 ; xxiv. 11. ° Rom. xiv. 5. » Eom. xiv. 17. 
p 1 Cor. viii. 13 ; Acts xv. 29. i Gal. ii. 5. 



190 THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

own statement, declared with an emphasis which would be 
imaccountable but for the vehemence and the importance of 
the conflict, that "if they were circumcised, Christ profited 
"them nothing, they were fallen from grace^;" and the 
final decree of the Apostles at Jerusalem, which, as has been 
said, conceded to Jewish prejudices all that could be conceded, 
was prefaced by declaring that " to those who went out ^ from 
" them saying, ' Ye must be circumcised and keep the law,' 
" they gave no such commandments." 

Their wide Diffusion. 

Such was the position of the Judaizers after the frustration 
of the first attempt to impose a yoke * on the neck of the dis- 
ciples which neither the Apostles nor their fathers had been 
able to bear. The battle had been fought and lost at Jeru- 
salem, but the cause was to them too sacred to be given up 
without a farther struggle in its behalf, and it is from this 
time forward that we trace their eff'orts as a distinct and 
energetic body in almost every place to which the influence 
of Christianity extended itself. Palestine of course must 
still have remained their head- quarters. 

Every Jew, wherever he dwelt, must have felt with the 
Jewish speaker in Philo, " Jerusalem is the city of my 
" fathers, the mother city not only of Judea, but of almost 
*' all the countries of the world through the colonies which 
" it has at diff'erent times sent forth But he must have 
felt no less how widely and deeply the ramifications of his 
race extended, through all the various provinces which Philo 
proceeds to enumerate. Beginning from the east, there was 
the vast settlement in Babylonia of those Jews who had re- 
mained after the return from the captivity. Of the twenty- 

' Gal. V. 4. » Acts xv. 24. ' Acts xv. 10. 

" Philo, Leg. ad Caium. 1031. Comp. Jos. Ant. xiv. 7. 2. 



THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



191 



four courses of priests, only four had followed Ezra to Pales- 
tine. No less than three universities of Jews existed in 
Mesopotamia alone. It was a well-known saying, " who- 
' ' ever dwells in Babylon is as though he dwelt in the land 
" of Israel." (Lightfoot, vol. ii. Appendix to Comments on 
1 Cor. xiv.) Advancing westward, there is hardly a pro- 
vince of the empire in which they did not form a consider- 
able portion of the population. The great colony at Alex- 
andria is too well known to need any further comment here. 
In every part of Asia Minor they had possessed numerous 
settlements from the time that the two thousand families of 
their countrymen had been transplanted thither by Antio- 
chus the Great, to keep down the unquiet population of 
Phrygia. (Jos. Ant. xii. 3.) Spreading, probably from thence, 
to Greece and the adjacent islands, in that of Cyprus alone 
their force was such that in the insurrection under Hadrian 
they massacred 240,000 of the Greek inhabitants, and took 
possession of the island. And in Rome the settlers to whom 
a large part of the Trans-tiberine district had been assigned 
by Pompey (Philo, Leg. ad Caiura, 1014,) had by the time 
of Augustus reached such an amount, that Josephus (Ant. 
xvii. 1, 11,) calculates the number of those who appeared 
at the trial of Archelaus to have been 8000, and Horace ex- 
presses so strongly his sense of their importance, as to imply 
(hyperbolically of course) that he and his fellow-citizens were 
a minority in comparison^. (Sat. i. 70.) 

Nor were they at this time, as we see from Juvenal (Sat. 
iii. 65,) and Martial (i. 42,) what they were soon after the 
fall of their city, the contemned and oppressed race that 
they have been in later times. They were feared, they were 

^ Most of these references are derived from the second volume of 
Milman's Hist, of the Jews, p. 134 — 141. See also the interesting 
account which Kenan gives of the rehgious state of the Eoman 
world, Les Apotres, c. xviii. ; and especially of the Jews at Kome, 
S. Paul, c. iv. 



192 



THE JUDAIZZRS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



hated, but they were not despised. In that era of transition, 
when the native vigour both of Paganism and of the Eoman 
character began to decline, it was natural that the strong 
will of the Jewish race, indomitable even in its extravagance, 
should have made itself felt ; that the ignorant populace, the 
sceptical philosopher, the Epicurean statesman, should alike 
have cowered before the sight of a religion, whose sublimity 
must have awed if it did not convert them, whose mystery 
must have excited their curiosity if it did not awaken their 
conscience. No complaints against the Eoman governor 
gained such a ready hearing at the imperial court as those 
froni Judsea ; no portion of the Roman people had such espe- 
cial privileges granted to them as the Jewish y settlers in 
Egypt and Asia Minor. But it was more than this. The 
gulf which naturally might have been expected to exist be- 
tween the Jewish and heathen portions of the empire was 
bridged over by the vast floating population of the prose- 
lytes whether ''of righteousness" or of "the gate," who, 
Gentiles by birth, became Jews by religion, and, being hence- 
forth known by the name of the " devout^," the " men that 
" feared God," lost the recollection of their own outward 
descent in the sense of that higher spiritual descent from 
Abraham which they were held to enjoy by the rite of cir- 
cumcision; whilst the diffusion of the Greek language by 
the conquests of Alexander as the medium of communication 

y See the acconnt of the Egyptian Jews in Strabo as quoted by 
Josephus (Ant. xiv. 7,2,) and of the privileges granted to the Galatian 
Jews in the Inscription of Ancyra. 

Such, as is well known, is the almost invariable usage in the Acts 
of the words ^vaefieis, evAafie7s, and (^o&ovfx^voL rhv Q4ov, meaning ap- 
parently " those who though Gentiles by birth were distinguished 
" from the rest of their race by devotion, and fear of the true God," 
a usage of which we already find traces in the contrast drawn in the 
later Psalms between "the house of Israel" and "those that fear 
" God." (See Ps. cxv. 9—11 ; cxxxv. 19, 20.) 



THE JFDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 193 

between the east and west at once introduced them to the 
study of the Old Testament, not in the form, so difficult to 
foreigners, of its Hebrew original, but in the well-known 
version of the Seventy. With what zeal these new citizens, 
so to speak, were invited to join the ranks of Judaism, may 
be judged from the woe denounced on those ^ who "com- 
" passed sea and land to make one proselyte.'* With what 
success this zeal was accompanied may be inferred from the 
complaint uttered on this very account by the Roman philo- 
sopher in the reign of iN'ero, that the conquered had given 
laws to the conquerors^." 

It has been necessary to enter at some length into the 
numbers and the influence of the Jewish residents in dif- 
ferent parts of the empire in order to the full understanding 
of all that follows. How exactly these inferences from con- 
temporary writers agree with the state of things described in 
the Acts and Epistles is obvious. In every Grecian city 
whether in Greece or Asia Minor (with the single exception 
of Athens,) St. Paul found a Jewish synagogue or proseucha 
to which in the first instance to address himself ; in every one 
(with the exception of Philippi and the tumult of Demetrius 
at Ephesus) the persecutions which he underwent were either 
excited or fomented through the influence of the Jewish over 
the Gentile population of the place. Of all the Epistles, how- 
ever clear the evidence in some instances that they are ad- 
dressed to those who had been originally heathens, there is 
not one which does not imply a familiar acquaintance with 
Jewish customs, and with the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
ment. Now what was true of the relation of the Jews them- 
selves to the rest of the ancient world would be true also of 
the Jewish Christians, more especially of those to whom, as 
making their Christianity subordinate to their Judaism, iz 

* Matt, xxiii. 15. ^ Yictoribus victi leges dederunt. (Seneca.) 

See Neander's Hist, of the Chnrch. (Eng. Tr., vol. i. p. 58.) 

O 



194 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



has been customary to give the name of Judaizers; and it 
was accordingly in the wide field thus open before them that 
they endeavoured to rally their forces for the preservation 
(as they thought) of the Christian society from the contami- 
nation and dissolution which the indiscriminate admission of 
the Gentile world was likely to bring upon it. 

I. PmsT Peeiod op the Jitdaizers. 

In describing the operations and views of a great party 
merely from such scattered hints as occur in the Epistles of 
St. Paul, it is of course difficult to ascertain that we have at 
all times seized the right point of view from which to regard 
them ; and it is obvious from those allusions themselves that 
the motives and feelings of the party were extremely various. 
Kor again must we confound with the great body of the sect, 
that portion of them whom we may call *'the weaker bre- 
thren''," to whose prejudices, as arising not from party vio- 
lence but from a scrupulous conscience, such tender con- 
sideration is shewn by the Apostle in the fourteenth chapter 
of his Epistle to the Eomans, and in the eighth of the First 
to the Corinthians. But, with these qualifications, it is easier 
to exhibit an outline at least of their proceedings and cha- 
racter than might be expected by those who have not duly 
weighed the vividness and truth of the touches, few and 
isolated as they may be, which we possess in the Apo- 
stolical Epistles. The first period of their activity, as has 
been already said, begins with the time when St. Paul first 
commenced what may be called his independent career 
as Apostle of the Grentiles; it closes with what was prac- 
tically his farewell to the Eastern Churches in his voyage 

" Such a distiaction seems to have existed in the Jewish Christiani 
of Justin's time, (Dial, cum Tryph. 48.) (Neander, Hist, of Church, 
ii. 12.) (Eng. Trans.) corresponding apparently to the two divisions 
afterwards known by the names of Nazarene and Ebionite (ib. 19.) 



THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 195 

to Eome. It is evident that to counteract the 'objects of his 
great mission, now for the first time fully known and under- 
stood, was the one great aim of the Judaizers. To contend 
against truth rather than for error, was with them, as with 
others of later times, the mark of sect and heresy, as it has 
been no less the mark of wisdom and goodness to contend not 
against error, but for the truth. It might well seem too, as 
if in this case, it was all that would be wanted for the ac- 
complishment of their purpose. The other Apostles might 
possibly be persuaded to concede; Peter, they knew, had 
been overawed by them at Antioch ; Barnabas had been car- 
ried away by their dissimulation; but he, never. "Delendus 
" est Paulus" was as truly their watchword as the cry for 
the destruction of Carthage had been of old to the Eoman 
senator. Accomplish this, and all was clear before them; 
without it, nothing. 

So long as Christianity appeared merely as a purer form 
of Judaism, as one of those ancient religions which was to- 
lerated by Roman law, it won even from heathens some- 
thing of that reverence, which, as has been before shewn, 
was entertained towards the Mosaic worship. 3ut as soon 
as the preaching of St. Paul exhibited its independent cha- 
racter, all those vague feelings of suspicion, of alarm, of 
mistrust, which the mass of mankind entertain against any- 
thing new, would immediately fasten on the man who dared 
to disturb the existing order of the world. Every point in 
his authority which seemed open to question, every trait of 
his character which could by any possibility admit of a sin- 
ister interpretation, would be at once turned against him, 
even though it may seem to us the best proof of his Divine 
mission and of his saintly character. 'He had not ''seen 
' "the Lord Jesus" (1 Cor. ix. 1,) in His lifetime' — such we 
know from his own Epistles was the language used concern- 
ing him, strange as it now seems to recall it — ' his authority 
' was only "by man and through man," it might be from 



196 



THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



' the prophets of Antiocli, it miglit be from "those at Jeru- 
' "salem who were Apostles before him." (Gal. i. 1, 17.) 

* He was only a Jew of Tarsus, not of pure Palestinian ^ origin 

* like the original Twelve, (2 Cor. xi. 22 ; Phil. iii. 5,) with 

* no letters of commendation from the mother Church at 

* Jerusalem. (2 Cor. iii. 1 ; x. 18, 12.) His very appearance 

* and conduct betrayed the hoUowness of his claims. " His 

* ''letters" indeed from a distance '' were weighty and power- 
' "ful," but "his bodily presence was weak and his speech 
'"contemptible," (2 Cor. x. 10.) His "infirmities in the 
' "flesh" were manifest to all, (2 Cor. xi. 30; xii. 10; Gal. 
' iv. 13;) even he himself had confessed that he had "no 

* "excellency of speech or of wisdom;" (1 Cor. ii. 1, 3:) 
' even the heathens round about, whilst in Barnabas they 
' had recognised the majesty of Jupiter, in the insignificance 
' of Paul had observed only the " chief speaking" of Mercu- 

* rius. (Acts xiv. 12.) He was conscious himself of his in- 
' ability to carry out his authority ; he fixed and unfixed 
'the times of his coming; he "used lightness," and the 
' things that he purposed he purposed according to the flesh, 
'so that his vacillating intentions were alternately, "yea, 
' " yea," and "nay, nay," (2 Cor. i. 17;) "in absence only 
' " he was bold towards them, in presence he was base." (2 
' Cor. x. 1.) He made a great boast of receiving no main- 
' tenance from the Greek Churches, but the real reason was 
' that he did not venture to exercise that true apostolical 
' privilege. He worked with his own hands, only because 
' he "had not power to eat and drink" (1 Cor. ix. 4, 6; 

d This is all that could be inferred with certainty of the accusation 
from the Epistles. But if we may trust the account of the Ebionite 
attacks upon him in Epiphanius (Hser. xxx. 16), it went so far as to 
assert that he was altogether a Gentile by birth, and only adopted cir- 
cumcision in order to marry the high-priest's daughter, and that it 
was the rejection of this suit which droye him into his extreme hos- 
tility to the law. 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 197 



* 2 Cor. xi. 9) at the cost of the Church. He remained single 

* only because *'he had not power to lead about a sister as 

* "a wife" like the other undoubted Apostles, the great 
' saints of the Jewish Church, "the brethren of the Lord 
'**and Cephas" (1 Cor. ix. 5.) And yet all this seeming 
' simplicity was merely a cover for serving his own interests. 

* Every one knew how easily he could " become all things to 

* "all men." (1 Cor. ix. 22.) "Was there no fear lest "his 

* "exhortations should not be of deceit and uncleanness and 

* "guile:" "flattering words and a cloak for covetousness," 
' (1 Thess. ii. 3, 5;) in "fleshly wisdom;" " dealing in the 

* "hidden things of dishonesty; walking craftily and hand- 
' "ling the words of God deceitfully,'* (2 Cor. i. 12 ; ii. 17; 
' iv. 2 ;) " with secret meanings," (2 Cor. iii. 12 ;) " writing 
' " other things than would be read or acknowledged" on the 
' surface? (2 Cor. i. 13.) In this very matter of the refusal 

* of maintenance, "be it so, he in his own person (eyw) did 

* "not burden them, but being crafty he caught them with 
' " guile ;" whilst pretending to receiving nothing from them 
' himself and on this ground, he yet contrived to "make 
' " a gain of them by Titus, and those whom he had sent" 

* (2 Cor. xii. 18,) to collect the contribution which was to 
' be ministered through him to the poor Christians in Judea. 
' (2 Cor. viii. 20, 21.)' 

Such, it would be said, were the manifold disqualifications 
for the office which he had assumed ; what a contrast, they 
would urge, to their own lofty pretensions ! ' They knew 

* and" were known by the great pillars of the Church, "James 

* " and Cephas and John." (Gal. ii. 9.) Some of them, those 

* of Palestinian origin, came direct " from James," the head 

* of the Church of Jerusalem, (Gal. ii. 12 ;) others, belonging 
' to the dispersion, looked to the great Apostle of the Cir- 
' cumcision as their head, called themselves by the name of 

* Cephas, (1 Cor. i. 12 ; iii. 22; ix. 5,) and rested on his au- 

* thority and example. (Gal. ii. 11, 14.) They had known 



198 THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



' too not Apostles only, but Christ Himself after the flesh," 
' (2 Cor. V. 16 ;) they trusted to themselves" from this their 

* earthly connexion with Him that they were in an especial 
' manner Christ's own," (2 Cor. x. 7 ;) with " proofs of 

* ''Christ speaking in them," (2 Cor. xiii. 3;) "Apostles 

* "of Christ," (2 Cor. xi. 13;) ''ministers of Christ," (2 Cor. 
' xi. 23 ;) "the party of Christ V' (1 Cor. i. 12.) They came 
' then in all the plenitude of Apostolical authority, as more 
' than Apostles, as the very chiefest Apostles, (ot vnepKiav 
' dnoa-ToXoi) (2 Cor. xi. 5; xii. 11;) with "letters of com- 
' " mendation" at once attesting their mission, (2 Cor. iii. 1 ; 
'v. 12; X. 12, 18;) with no false shame in asserting the 
' privilege which the Lord Himself had ordained to His 
' oldest, original disciples, that "they who preach the Gos- 
' "pel should live of the Gospel." (1 Cor. ix. 14; 2 Cor. 
' xi. 21 ; Matt. x. 11.) Powerful in speech, (2 Cor. xi. 6,) 
' not hesitating to ^ assume that absolute control over their 
' charge which by " exalting themselves" and " bringing 
' "into bondage" and "lording it over the faith" of their 
' converts (2 Cor. xi. 20 ; i. 24) was the best ground for 
' glorying and for proving that they were the masters and 
' not the slaves of their disciples.' 

It would be natural to expect, even if we had not posi- 
tive testimony to assure us, that with these lofty claims of 
the Judaizers were mingled those baser and more selfish mo- 
tives into which all sectarianism is prone to degenerate. To 
them may well be applied with a slight alteration the well- 
known saying of Coleridge, that they ' ' who began by loving 
" the law of Moses more than the truth, went on to love 

^ The more detailed proof of this representation is reserved in part 
for the Essay on the Divisions of the Corinthian Church, with such 
illustrations as are furnished by the Clementines. 

f This again is in accordance with the spirit of hierarchical domi- 
nion exhibited in the Ebionite works of a later date. See Ep. Petr. ad 
Jac. c. 1. Clem, ad Jac. 1. Apost. Const, ii. 30 — 32, 34, 35. 



THE JUDAIZEKS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



199 



their own sect better than the law, and ended by loving 
" themselves better than their sect." It was natural that 
in their claim to receive maintenance from the Churches, 
they should have been convicted by St. Paul of being " de- 

ceitful workers of their own interest," (SoXtot epyarac, 2 Cor. 
xi. 13,) and of "making a trade of the word of God," {Kanrj- 
Xevovres top \6yov 6eov, 2 Cor. ii. 17) : and again, that with 
their zeal for circumcision was blended the baser motive of 
hiding their Christianity under s the veil of a tolerated reli- 
gion, "whose praise was not of God but of man," (Rom. ii. 
29,) in order " to please men," " lest they should suffer per- 
" secution for the cross of Christ." (Gal. i. 10; v. 11 ; vi. 
12.) Still on the whole they must be regarded as genuine 
fanatics, with that mixture of craft and self-interest with 
which fanaticism is often blended, yet subordinate to the 
zeal, the jealousy, (C^j^os, Gal. iv. 17, 18,) for the honour of 
their law and country which distinguished the Jewish " Zea- 

lots" properly so called, and which alone could have given 
them the success which they enjoyed. 



Their Efforts in Palestine, Asia Minor, and Greece. 

What that success was is evident from merely following 
the course of St. Paul's journeys. Wherever he was, there 
were they, like vultures on his track, to seize the spoil which 
his apostolical efforts had won for the Church before they en- 
tered on the field. (2 Cor. x. 14.) The meeting at which 
his mission had been sanctioned by the Church of Jerusalem 
had hardly been dissolved, when " certain came from James" 
to Antioch in the hope, and for a time with the effect, of un- 
doing all that had there been determined. (Gal. ii. 12.) In 

s "Sub umbraculo religionis licitse." This was made a reproach 
against Christians in later times. See Neander, Hist, of the Church, 
(Eng. Tr.) i. 83. 



200 THE JTTDAIZEKS OP TKE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



Galatia^, the simple-minded Celts who had just received 
St. Paul ''as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus," and 
" would if it had been possible have plucked out their eyes 
'* and given them to him," (Gal. iv. 15,) were so soon carried 
away by these new teachers "to another gospel," "a little 

leaven had so entirely leavened the whole lump," (Gal. v. 
9; i. 6,) that their once beloved Apostle had become an 
" enemy to them because he had told them the truth ; they 
*' were fallen from grace." (Gal. iv. 16 ; v. 4.) At Corinth, 
already before he had written the first Epistle, the party of 
Cephas, though not dominant, had begun to question his au- 
thority, (1 Cor. i. 1 ; ix. 1, 4,) and in the few months which 
elapsed by the time that it was necessary to write the second, 
they and their kindred factions had attained such influence 
that "the majority" {oi noXXoi, 2 Cor. ii. 17,) of Corinthian 
teachers belonged to them. All the boasted wisdom of the 
Corinthian Church could not prevent them from " suffering" 
the despotic dominion of any of these leaders " gladly," 
^' even if he brought them into bondage, if he devoured 

them, if he exalted himself, if he smote them on the face," 
(2 Cor. xi. 20 ;) and the reports which had been already cir- 
culated with less success at Thessalonica (1 Thess. i. 3, 5,) 
against the character of the Apostle whom they had known 
by "so many signs and wonders and mighty deeds," were so 

^ This rapid transition from extreme veneration to extreme anti- 
pathy, which is nowhere so strongly implied as in the Epistle to the 
Galatians, is exactly what might have been expected from the excita- 
ble and changeable temper of a half-civiHzed race. Compare a similar 
revulsion in the simple heathens of Lystra and the "barbarian" inha- 
bitants of MeUta. (Acts xiv. 19 ; xxviii. 6.) Compare too the well- 
known scene in the history of the ancestors of these very Galatians, 
when in the sack of Eome the Gauls had first regarded the Koman 
senators in the Forum as something more than human, and then, the 
moment that the spell of reverence was broken, put them all to death 
— "prime ut deos venerati, deinde ut homines despicati interfecere." 
See Arnold's Eome, i. 542. 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 201 

readily believed on the authority of these new comers, that 
he had himself to take every precaution *'to provide things 
honest not only in the sight of the Lord but in the sight of 
men," (2 Cor. viii. 21 ;) and to vindicate himself in detail 
from the charges brought against him. (2 Cor. i. 13 — 18 ; 
iii. 1 ; iv. 7 ; x. — xiii.) And, although we cannot with cer- 
tainty assume that they were connected with all the plots 
against his life, of which the Acts speak as concerted by the 
Jews, yet when we consider how slight the distinction must 
have been which separated them from the Jews which be- 
lieved not," (Acts xvii. 5,) and how necessarily from their 
intense hostility to St. Paul they must have sympathized 
with every attempt to thwart his progress, it is almost un- 
avoidable to conclude that in the share which the Jews took 
in the Ephesian tumult, (Acts xix. 23,) and the conspiracy 
which was to lie in wait for him on his return from Greece 
to Syria, (Acts xx. 3,) at the time when his contest with 
the Judaizers was at its height, they must have played an 
active part. The furious assault upon him in the Temple 
(Acts xxi. 30), which ended in his long imprisonment at 
Caesarea and Eome, is not indeed expressly ascribed to the 
instigation of *' the many thousand Jews who believed at 
"Jerusalem:" still, when we consider how completely it 
destroyed the effect of the peace-offering to his countrymen 
in the contribution for the poor in Judaea, on which he had 
built such hopes, and which they had, for that very reason 
perhaps, done so much to misinterpret ; (Rom. xvi. 25 — 27 ; 
1 Cor. xvi. 1; 2 Cor. vii. — ix. ; Acts xxiv. 17;) how totally 
it altered all his plans of a mission to western Europe, (Rom. 
XV. 24 — 28; Acts xx. 25,) and removed him for four years 
in this the prime of his life and activity to close imprison- 
ment, (Acts xxiv. 27 ; xxviii. 30,) — we may well imagine 
with what a proud satisfaction the Judaizers must have felt 
that God had set His seal to their exertions, and that the 



202 THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAI AGE. 

danger which had threatened their Church and nation was 
now successfully arrested. 

Their Efforts at Rome. 

One task alone remained to them, and that was to under- 
mine the influence which he might have acquired before by 
liis Epistle, or would now acquire by his presence, although, 
in confinement, at Eome. At Eome alone, that particular 
phase of Judaism which we are now considering had not yet 
manifested itself. There had been the "weaker brethren," 
as we have seen already, whom St. Paul addressed in tte 
foiuteenth chapter; there had been another class of whom 
we shall see more hereafter, who had been addressed in the 
thirteenth and sixteenth ; but, as there is no trace in the 
Epistle itself of the peculiar form with which we are now 
concerned, so also it is expressly stated that when on St. 
Paul's arrival at Eome he addressed his countiymen resi- 
dent in that city, evidently expecting that his implacable 
enemies had been there before him with their usual accusa- 
tions, they answered at once, ''"We neither received letters 
" from Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren^ 
" wh.0 came shewed or spake any tarm of thee." (Acts xxviii. 
21.) That such however was not long the case, appears from 
the one Epistle wh.ich gives us any account of the Apostle's 

^ The -^ord " brethren" (aSeA^oi) in this passage, as also in all pro- 
bability in Acts xsii. 5, must be (not Christians but) Jews ; as in the 
common phrase " Men and brethren," {6.v^pes 6.de\(poi,) Acts ii. 37 ; 
vii. 2 ; xiii. 26 ; xxii. 1 ; xxiii. 1, 5, 6, which seems to shew that in 
the months of Jews speaking to Jews it must always be so understood. 
With this meaning of the passage in Acts xxviii, 21 agrees also the 
expression in verse 22, " This sect that everywhere is spoken against," 
and the description in verses 23 — 29, of the Apostle's preaching to 
them. If this be so, then the only mention of the Roman Chiistians 
contained in the Acts, is the allusion to "the brethren" who came to 
meet Paul at Forum Appii, Acts xxviii. 15. 



THE JTJDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 203 

personal history during the long imprisonment at Eome, 
that to the Philippians. There we still hear of those riyal 
teachers, who preached Christ of contention, not sincerely, 
" supposing to add affliction to his bonds." In them appa- 
rently it was that he saw the inveterate enemies, who like 
the unclean "dogs" of the eastern cities had tracked their 
prey even into his prison at Kome, the "evil workers" of 
their own gain, the party who, having confidence in the 
flesh, deserved only the name of " the concision," leaving the 
name of the circumcision in its highest sense to those who 
worshipped God in the spirit, and "made their boast" (kw- 
xa>fjLevovs) not in outward rites but in " Christ Jesus j." 

This however is the latest direct mention in the ITew Tes- 
tament of that peculiarly personal hostility to St. Paul, that 
zeal for the law and circumcision, which marked the earlier 
stage of the Judaizing Christians ; subordinate traces of it 
indeed may be found afterwards, but it is no longer the 
prominent aspect which it wears in the Apostolic writings ; 
whether from the absence of the fuel which had once been 
furnished to its energies by the personal presence and ac- 
tivity of its great opponent, or, as is more probable, from 
its absorption into the new forms in which it henceforward 
clothed itself. 

II. Second Pekiod. The later Epistles of St. Paul, and the 
General Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude. 

The heresies of the second act of the conflict with Judaism 
on which we now enter are, as is natural, more dif&cult to 

j Phil. i. 16 ; iii. 2, 3. The image of " the dog" both in Greek and 
Hebrew, as still in Oriental countries, seems to unite to the expression 
of scorn, the double idea of shamelessness and uncleanness, such as I 
have endeavoured to represent. Comp. Ps. lix. 14 ; Deut. xxiii. 18 ; 
Eev. xxii. 15. For the notion of dishonesty impHed in the words 
" evil workers," {SoXiovs ipydras,) comp. 2 Cor. xi. 13 ; iv. 2. 



204 THE JIJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

reconstruct than those of the first ; the unity of the contest 
is lost by its ceasing to centre round St. Paul ; the individual 
traits which were brought out by his personal conflict with 
his opponents are necessarily lost in the more general cha- 
racter of the Epistles from which we must now derive our 
. information ; the simple element of a Judaizing Christianity, 
intelligible to any ordinary reader of the Old and New Testa- 
ment, now becomes complicated by a vast variety of mixed 
influences, only to be understood fully through their con- 
nexion with causes extraneous to both Jew and Christian. 
It will still however be possible, by confining ourselves to the 
Apostolical writings, and to the historical rather than the 
prophetic representations which they furnish, to give, so far 
as can be done within a short compass, a general view of this 
new development of evil. 

Revolutionary Character of the Heresies of this Period. 

Its object and principles were in most respects wholly dif- 
ferent from those which we have first discussed. The great 
aim of the Judaizers hitherto had been to restrain, so to 
speak, the energies of Christians within J ewish limits, chiefly 
on purely fanatical grounds, as has been before stated, partly 
also with something of the worldly prudence which formed at 
least one element in the speech of the chief priests,'' lest the 
" Eomans should come and take away their place and na- 
" tion 1." Then, as on that more awful occasion, they thought 

it expedient that one man should die and the whole nation 
'* perish not," (John xi. 50 ;) they joined their unbelieving 
countrymen, in fear of the odium which they might incur 

^ In the " Life and Epistles of St. Paul " by Mr. Conybeare and Dean 
Howson, vol. i. part ii. p. 489 — 492, there are some strong arguments 
brought against the Judaic character of tliese later heresies ; in con- 
formity with which some of the expressions to that effect in the first 
edition are modified. ^ John xi. 48. 



THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 205 

from the extravagances of a rising sect which threatened to 
" turn the world upside down, and to do contrary to the 
" decrees of Caesar." (Acts xvii. 6, 7.) But when in pro- 
portion to the diflfusion of Christianity and the recognition of 
its universal character, any such attempt hecame more and 
more hopeless, it is perfectly conceivahle that the very same 
party should suddenly shift its ground, and that, instead of 
endeavouring to check the new religion, they should see that 
it was possihle to use it as an engine for effecting their own 
purposes. The very fact however of this change of position 
at once introduced elements which were either wholly new, 
or which having been before subordinate, now rose to the 
surface of the movement. Christianity was now about to 
share the common lot of every great moral change which has 
ever taken place in human society, by containing amongst its 
advocates men who are morally the extreme opposites of each 
other, some being the really best and noblest of their kind, 
and others the vilest. Perfect as it was in itself," (it will 
be perceived that this description is taken from the work ™ in 
which this fact has been most fully set forth,) perfect as it 
was in itself, its nominal adherents often took part with it 
for its negative side, not for its positive, advocating it so far 
as it destroyed what was already in existence, but having 
no sympathy with that better state of things which it pro- 
** posed to set up in the room of the old. Accordingly when 
the Church began to shew its wide range of action and its 
" singular efficacy, all who longed to see the existing system 
overthrown, rallied themselves round its assailant. Here 
they thought was a power which they could use for the 
accomplishment of their purpose ; when this should first 
" have cleared the ground of the thickets which encumbered 
it, it would be for them to sow in the vacant soil their own 
favourite seed. Let any one who knows what the Eoman 



Arnold's Fragment on the Church, p. 85. 



206 THE JTJDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOIICAL AGE. 

empire was in the first century of the Christian era imagine 
" to himself the monstrous forms of opinion and practice 
" which such a state of society so diseased could not fail to 

engender. AU varieties of ancient and foreign superstition 
" existed together with the worst extremity of unprincipled 
" scepticism, while, in practice, the unquelled barbarism of 
" the ruder provinces, and the selfish cruelty fostered by long 
" and bloody civil wars, had provided a fearful mass of the 

fiercer passions, and the unrestrained dissoluteness of a 

thoroughly corrupt society was a source no less abundant 
^' of every thing most shameless in sensuality. These seem- 
* ' ingly incongruous evils, superstition and scepticism, ferocity 
" and sensual profligacy, when from any particular circum- 

stances they turned against the monster society which had 
^' bred them, sheltered themselves under the name of Chris- 
^' tianity," and became the heresies of the second period of 
the apostolic age. 

Greatness of the Danger, 

The vastness and reality of the danger which this crisis 
threatened not only to the purity, but (humanly speaking) 
to the very existence of the Christian Church, is evident 
both from heathen authors and from the apostolical writings 
themselves. Tar and near, the front rank of the Christian 
society, as it moved forward in its aggression on the heathen 
world, was pre-occupied by these dreadful shapes of error 
and wickedness, which alone attracted the attention of the 
superficial observer, — and which rendered the Christian name 
a by- word amongst its enemies for licentiousness and fanati- 
cism, prevented the wisest and best of Roman historians from 
seeing anything in the Christianity of the age of Nero, ex- 
cept a ''hateful superstition," known ^ only by the "shame- 

ful and abominable crimes" of those who professed it. One 

° Tac. Ann. xv. 44. Comp. Iren. adv. Haer. i. 25, 3. 



THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 207 

point alone these heresies shared in common with the Church, 
and that was the intense — and the Scriptures justify us in 
adding — the preternatural energy of its operations. Even 
the Apostles themselves seem to have gazed with awe on the 
portentous forms, half human half diabolical, which con- 
fronted them either close at hand or in immediate prospect. 
The ''working of Satan with all power and signs and lying 
"wonders," (2 Thess. ii. 9;) the ''seducing spirits and 
" teachings of demons, who^ speak lies and hypocrisy, and 
" have their consciences seared with a hot iron," (1 Tim. 
iv. 2;) the "synagogue of Satan," (Eev. ii. 9, 13;) "the 
" false prophet," (Rev. xvi. 13;) the "antichrists," (1 John 
ii. 18 ;) the " spirits that were to be tried whether they were 
" of God," (1 John iv. 1 — 3;) the sorceries of Balaam, of 
Egypt, of Jezebel, (2 Pet. ii. 15 ; Jude 11 ; Eev. ii. 14 ; 2 
Tim. iii. 8, 9 ; Eev. ii. 20 ;) such are the figures under which 
the Apostolical writings express their sense of the danger 
which impended over them. 

Form and seat of the movement. 

In endeavouring to exhibit its workings in detail, two 
points emerge which will give some assistance in guiding 
us through the mazes of a labyrinth from the nature of the 
case so wrapt in obscurity and uncertainty. In the first 
place, it would seem that Judaism still succeeded in uniting 
itself with the movement. It was no longer the informing 
soul and spirit, but it was still the framework, the instru- 
ment, the handle, to which the floating elements of evil, 
however loosely and doubtfully, continued to fasten them- 
selves. It was no longer the stiff Pharisaical Judaism which 
had opposed St. Paul, — that, so far as the Church was con- 
cerned, had retired into the background, and St. Paul is 

" The English version is ambiguons. All the participles in 1 Tim. 
iv. 2, 3, relate not to nv^s but ^aiix6vwv. 



208 THE JUBAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

therefore no longer the all-ahsorhing figure of the plot ; — 
hut we shall see, as we trace it in detail, that in some de- 
gree it still wore the Jewish physiognomy, still pandered to 
Jewish prejudices, still fostered the wilder and more remote 
extravagances of Jewish superstition P. 

Secondly, what is lost in unity of person is in some mea- 
sure compensated hy the greater unity of place. The pre- 
vious movements of the Judaizers had been discernible in 
every part of the empire from Palestine to Italy ; the pre- 
sent, so far as we shall be able to follow them in the apo- 
stolical writings, however widely they may have extended, 
and however great their influence may have been at times in 
Eome itself, yet generally speaking had their head quarters 
in that part of Asia Minor on which the earlier Judaism had 
produced the least effect, the province of Proconsular Asia, 
the Christian communities which lay in the plain formed by 
the vales of the Maeander and Cayster. If the metropolis of 
the earlier opponents of Christianity had been, as in some 
sense it must have been of the later also, the holy city of 
Jerusalem, so the metropolis of the mixed Judaism of this 
second period was Ephesus. In that great emporium of 
Asia Minor, uniting, as has been truly said^, more than 
any other city in the world, the manners of the east and 
west, — with its mingled population of Greeks and Asiatics, 
with its schools of magic, and its magnificent temple, whose 
sacred image blended the name of the Grecian Diana with 
the symbolic form of the old eastern nature-worship, — with 
its large population of legalized Jewish settlers who had 
furnished there as elsewhere the nucleus of the Christian 
Church ; — there more than in any other place it was natural 
that the strange forms of eastern and western superstition 
should meet together, and that their combination should ex- 



p See Eenan's " Antichrist." 
1 See Milman's Hist, of Christianity, ii. 24, 203. 



THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 209 

ercise the greatest sway. And there accordingly it is that 
we are to look for the chief scene of the last apostolical con- 
flict. It was in his farewell warning to the Ephesian elders 
against the false teachers who should arise even from their 
own body to draw away disciples after them, that St. Paul 
gave the earliest distinct intimation of the coming evil. It is 
to individuals or communities within the range of this influ- 
ence that every one of his later Epistles is addressed, with 
the exception of that to the Philippians, which, as has been 
seen, treats for the most part of the earlier form of the mis- 
chief. It is to the Christians of Asia Minor that the Eirst 
Epistle of Peter is expressly written, and with it, we may 
suppose, what is called ''the Second Epistle," and that of 
St. Jude. And it is, lastly, to the seven Churches im- 
mediately in the neighbourhood of Ephesus, or to Ephesus 
itself, that we must confine the ministrations of St. John. 
As, in short, it was the centre of what"^ was called "the 
people of the dispersion," so also for that very reason 
it naturally became the chief sphere of Christian activity, 
the battle-field of the conflict of Christianity with its most 
formidable rival. 

It now remains to trace this new eff'ort of early heresy 
through its various forms down to the crisis of the aposto- 
lical age, commonly marked by the fall of Jerusalem. 

These may be divided into the two phases indicated in the 
predictions of the two Epistles to Timotheus, (1 Tim. iv. 1 — 5 ; 
2 Tim. iii. 1 — 9,) into what may be called the ascetic and 
the licentious. Both equally partook of the mixed elements 
which have just been noticed, and each played into the 
other, but here for the sake of convenience they may be 
considered apart. 

' See Zullig on the Apocalypse, p. 215, 216. 



P 



210 



THE JUDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE, 



The Heresies in their Ascetic and Superstitious Form. 

{a.) The former of these, as might be expected, is the 
earlier in point of time, as we infer from its occupying the 
chief place in the two first of the Epistles which were writ- 
ten within this period, viz., that to the Colossians and the 
Pirst to Timothy. Its two leading features, in which we 
already see the influx of the more purely oriental element, 
are a scrupulous abstinence from matter, and an indulgence 
in fanciful speculations about heavenly beings. It is true 
that to both these errors a Grentile origin might, not with- 
out reason, be ascribed. Touch not, taste not, handle not" 
— a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility — a neg- 
lecting of the body," (Col. ii. 21, 23)— forbidding to 
marry, commanding to abstain from food," bodily exer- 
cises," (1 Tim. iv. 3,) might in themselves be merely the 
result of the Manichaean abhorrence of matter, with which 
doubtless they have a connexion. The philosophy and vain 
deceit after the tradition of men," "the voluntary humi- 
" lity and worshipping of angels," intruding into things 
not seen," (Col. ii. 8, 18,) " the profane and vain babblings 
and oppositions of science falsely so called," (1 Tim. vi. 20,) 
the rejection of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
by Hymenseus and Philetus, (1 Tim. i. 20 ; 2 Tim. ii. 18,) 
perhaps ''the seducing spirits and teaching of demons," 
(I Tim. iv. 1,) might possibly be referred to the Gnostic 
theories of eeons and emanations. But that the general form 
of the errors was Jewish appears in the Epistle to the Colos- 
sians, from the stress laid on the spiritual as distinct from 
the outward circumcision, (ii. 11 — 14,) — in the First Epistle 
to Timothy, from its opening declaration that the " vain jan- 
*' glers" who were to be opposed desire to be teachers of 
" the law," (1 Tim. i. 7.) This is true also, predominantly 
if not exclusively, of each particular subdivision. 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 211 

That the hodily austerity had attached itself to the Jewish 
asceticism with which we are familiar in the Essenes and 
Therapeutse, is evident from its association with such phrases 
as ''the rudiments of the world," (Col. ii. 8, 20 ; comp. Gal. 
iv. 3, 9 ;) "let no man judge you in respect of the meat and 
" drink, or of an holyday, or the new moons, or the Sabbath 
" days, which are a shadow of things to come," (Col. ii. 16 ; 
comp. Gal. iv. 10; Rom. xiv. 3;) "profane and old wives' 
" fables," (1 Tim. iv. 7,) evidently identical with "Jewish 
" fables, and commandments of men," in the Epistle to Titus, 
(i. 14.) That the angel worship also was such as became 
ultimately fixed in the superstitions of the Talmud, may be 
inferred partly from the general tone in the Epistle to the 
Colossians, partly from the similar danger implied in the 
nearly cotemporary Epistle to the Hebrews, whose readers, 
of undoubtedly Jewish descent, receive almost similar in- 
struction, (comp. Col. i. 16; iii. 15, with Heb. i. 4 — 7,) and 
is confirmed by the vestiges of such a superstition which may 
be traced in the neighbourhood of Colossse long after it had 
ceased to exercise any general influence, — the censures di- 
rected against it in the thirty-fifth canon of the council of 
the adjoining city of Laodioea, the chapels of the Archangel 
Michael which Theodoret saw in Phrygia and Sardis, and 
one of which remained standing in Colossae itself down to 
the Middle Ages, not to speak of the legends which are still 
said to linger amongst its present Greek inhabitants Such 
was the last form of Judaism which attracted the direct no- 
tice of the Epistles of St. Paul. It is evident indeed that in 
them he regards it as a feeble antagonist compared with its 
earlier manifestation ; he is nowhere incited to the same 
vehemence as in the Epistle to the Corinthians and Gala- 
tians ; he speaks strongly of it, but not so much in anger as 

» See Thiersch's Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament, 
p. 272. 



212 THE JTJDAIZEES OE THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

(if we may venture so to apply the word) in scorn. Still we 
may believe tbat under these few withering sentences in the 
Epistles to Colossae and Timotheus all that was important in 
the purely Jewish element of this false asceticism dwindled 
away and perished. 

The Heresies in their Licentious and Revolutionanj Form. 

(h.) There was however another and more formidable shape 
which these hereries were to assume, and with which the one 
just discussed seems to have allied itself according to the 
proverbial paradox of the natural approximation of extremes. 
It is to this, the wilder and more licentious aspect of the 
early heresies, that the general sketch with which this part 
of the subject has been opened more especially applies. That 
this danger had in some sort already beset the Christian com- 
munities is evident from the warnings in 1 Thess. iv. 1 — 8 ; 
1 Cor. v., vi. ; 2 Cor. vi. 11— 18 ; Eom. xiii. 13, 14; Gal. v. 
19 ; but it is not till the period now before us that it pre- 
sented any distinct and organized front. Eut taking the 
Epistle to Titus and the Second to Timothy for the con- 
necting link between this and the last -mentioned form of 
error, and examining fully the Epistles of St. Peter and 
St. Jude, and the address to the seven Churches of the 
Apocalypse, we shall arrive here also at certain definite 
characteristics which mark a new era in the development 
of these Judaic heresies 

These are, — the attempt to overthrow the existing order 
of Roman society, combined almost always with doctrines 
of avowed licentiousness, and, although less frequently, with 
professions of sorcery and magic. It is remarkable that the 
earliest notices of any tendency of this kind are found not 
in the Asiatic provinces which have been desciibed as the 



* See Kenan's " Aatichrist," c. x\i. x\u. 



THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



213 



usual scene of these wild opinions, and in whicli they ulti- 
mately organized themselves, but at Rome. There, where 
as we haye seen, the Pharisaic form of Judaism did not make 
its way till long afterwards, we find a joint exhortation to 
obedience and to purity of life in language so strong, as if 
to imply there was something in the state of the Eoman 
Christians which imperatively called for such a warning. 
(Eom. xiii. 1 — 14.) And the only teachers especially marked 
out for their condemnation and avoidance are those who cause 
it to be slanderously reported of Christians that 'Hhey say 
" 'let us do evil that good may come,'" and who "cause 
" the divisions into two parties, and the occasions of off'ence 
" and scandal amongst them contrary to the teaching which 
" they had received, (ras- dixoaTaalas Koi to. aKavdaXa,) who 
" serve not the Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly, and 

with words of kindness and bounty (Sta r^? xPW^^^^y^^^ 
" evXoylas) deceive the hearts of the simple," (Eom. iii. 8 ; 
xvi. 17, 18.) These words would exactly describe the coun- 
terfeit Christianity taught by those who wished to use the 
real Christianity for their own interests, and would also 
critically coincide with the somewhat later description in 
the Epistle to the Philippians of a party, wholly distinct 
as it would seem from the pure Judaizers of Phil. iii. 1 — 6, 
also at Eome; "who are enemies of the cross of Christ, 
" whose end is destruction, (comp. Eom. iii. 8,) whose 
" God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who 
"mind earthly things — for our citizenship {rjn^v yap t6 
" TToXireC/xa) is in heaven ;" as though the Apostle said, 
" they desire an earthly empire, but we look only for a hea- 
" venly one (Phil. iii. 19, 20.) Now when we con- 

Such an application of this passage from Phil. iii. 20, as well as 
of that from Phil. iii. 2, 3, already quoted, is perhaps not capable of 
formal proof to any one who is disposed to doubt it, nor is it essential 
to the argument. StiU it may be said, 1. that no other explanation 



214 T^E JUDAIZElis OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

sider how completely Eome was at this time the confluence 
(to use the expression of its own poet) of the Tiber and the 
Orontes, how truly in its darker form it was like " Babylon 
^' the great who had made all nations to drink of the wine 
^' of the wrath of her fornication," it is not surprising that 
we should find here an exception to the usual scene of the 
last apostolical conflict, and that the earliest manifestation 
of this wild revolutionary spirit should have first shewed 
itself not in the eastern but the western focus of lawlessness 
and superstition, where there was so much at once to foster 
and to provoke it. And it may reasonably be asked whether 
the practiceig to which the Apostle here alludes may not 
have furnished some foundation for the tradition of the 
visit to Rome of that real heresiarch and sorcerer, who 
had indeed before ''declared himself to be the power of 
'* God, and had bewitched the people of Samaria," but 
who here first, according to the story, set himself in open 
rivalry and hostility to apostolical Christianity^; whether 
it may not have been these very practices which gave rise 
to the misrepresentations of Tacitus already referred to,— 
nay whether it is not probable that they may really in their 
hostility to the city, as well as the laws of Eome, have given 
cause for the saying of Nero himself that the true incen- 
diaries of Rome were to be found amongst the ranks of the 
Christian community. 

But another sphere than the crowded stage of the metro- 
polis was needed for the full exhibition of these heresies ; 
it was reserved for another hand than that of the Apostle of the 
Gentiles, whose work was now drawing towards its natural 

falls in so naturally with the immediate context, or with the probable 
reference of the allusions in this Epistle to parties not in the East 
but at Eome. 2. That it receives confirmation from the coincidence 
of Phil. iii. 2, 3, with Phil. i. 15, 16, and of Phil. iii. 20, with Rom. 
xvi. 17, 18. 
" Acts viii. 9 ; Iren. adv. Hasr. i. 20. 



THE JTJDATZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 215 

close, to arrest their progress. It is in the Asiatic Churches 
that this false liberty, like its twin sister of false asceticism, 
presents itself most definitely to view. It is impossible to 
mistake that the party which called forth the last warnings 
of St. Paul at Crete and Ephesus in the Epistle to Titus and 
the Second to Timothy, is in all its main features the same 
as that which is attacked in Asia Minor generally in the 
Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, and in the seven Churches 
of Proconsular Asia in the Revelations. In all there is the 
same remarkable union of principles at once anarchical and li- 
centious ; men ''lovers of their own selves," proud, unholy, 
" without natural affection, truce -breakers, traitors, heady, 

high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God," 

(2 Tim. iii. 2—4 ;) men " whose mind and conscience is de- 
" filed, so that with them nothing is pure — abominable and 
" disobedient, and to every good work reprobate," (Tit. i. 15, 

16;) who must "be put in mind to be subject to princi- 
" palities and powers, to obey magistrates, to speak evil of 
" no man, to be no brawlers, so that the doctrine of God 

their Saviour may be adorned in all things, and that he 
" who is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no 

evil thing to say of them." (Tit. iii. 1 ; ii. 8, 10.) This 
general picture is evidently the same as that which calls 
forth the warnings of St. Peter's First Epistle, " to abstain 

from fleshly lusts and submit themselves to every or- 

dinance of men for the Lord's sake;" to ''have their 
*' conversation honest among the Gentiles, who speak against 
" them as evil-doers, that so with well-doing they may put 
" to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as free and not 
*' using their liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as 
" servants of God;" that ''to endure grief is thankworthy 
" only if when they do well they suffer for it;" that "it is 
" better they should suffer for well-doing than for evil- 
-doing;" that "no one will harm them if they become 
" {yevTjaBe) followers of that which is good," that "they 



216 



THE JTJDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAl AGE. 



" must not suffer as murderers or thieves or evil-doers." 
(1 Pet. ii. 16—20; iii. 11—17; iv. 12—15.) And what 
is implied here indirectly is in the Second Epistle of St. Peter 
and the parallel passage in St. Jude stated directly. In 
both, the examples of the angels and the world before the 
flood, and of Sodom and Gomorrah, are held out as warnings 
to those ''who walk after the flesh in the lust of unclean- 
" riess, and despise governments;" "murmurers, complainers, 
" walking after their own lusts, speaking great swelling 
" words;" who while "they promise their followers liberty 
" are themselves the servants of corruption." (2 Pet. ii. 
1 — 19; Jude 6 — 16.) And lastly, all of them are identified 
with the corrupters of the Seven Churches by the implied 
union of those doctrines of gross sensuality with the pro- 
fession of magic and sorcery, a union which perhaps might 
be startling to us did we not know from the cotemporary 
records of heathen authors how generally these acts were 
professed by all those who lent themselves by such means 
to be the instruments or instigators of the crimes so pre- 
valent amongst the higher orders of the Roman Empire, 

Flectere si nequeo snperos Acheronta movebo, 
which has always been the feeling of the dregs of a corrupt 
society, was never more fully exemplified than in the mingled 
wickedness and superstition which marked the witches, sor- 
cerers, and astrologers of the age of Tiberius, Nero, and 
Domitian. Elymas at Cyprus, Simon Magus at Rome, 
Apollonius of Tyana at Ephesus, are well-known instances 
of the influence which such arts endeavoured to gain in 
rivalry to that of the Christian miracles. And it is there- 
fore exactly what we might expect, when we find that with 
the grosser forms of vice in the Second Epistle ^ to Timothy 

For the union of licentiousness and magic in the representations 
of Simon Magus, see Iren. adv. H»r. i. 23. 

^ The same union is to be observed in Gal. v. 19, 20, daeXyela eiBw- 
XoXarpela, (papfxaK^ia. 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



217 



are joined " seducers" or "wizards" (yoT^rf?) after the manner 
of the old Egyptian magicians " Jannes and Jambres who 
"withstood Moses," (2 Tim. iii. 8, 13;) and that in the 
Seven Churches, ''the woman Jezebel who calleth herself 
" a prophetess, and the false prophet Balaam," who is also 
held up as the type of the heresies attacked in 2 Pet. ii. 15, 
and Jude 11, and whose very name when translated into the 
Greek form of Nicolaus seems to have been fixed on one 
of their sects, are spoken of as the prototypes of those who 
now endeavoured to lead the Christians *'to eat things 
" sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication." (Eev. ii. 
6, 14, 15, 20.) 

It might seem at first sight, after this brief survey of these 
wild and licentious speculations, that now at last we must 
have bid farewell to Judaism, that now at length we must 
have reached a form of evil which is the excess not of the 
servile spirit of the East, but of the free spirit of the "West ; 
not a perversion of the teaching of James and Cephas, but 
a perversion such as we have seen in later times of the teach- 
ing of Paul. To a certain extent this is true: the hetero- 
geneous element which from the state of the Roman empire 
at this time must have been mixed up with any such 
movement has been already noticed. The Epistles to the 
Corinthians furnish indications that there had been, even 
at that early period, a danger lest the unrestrained profli- 
gacy of the Gentile world should shelter itself under the 
cover of Christian liberty. The close of the Epistle to the 
Galatians (v. 11 — vi. 6.) indicates that there was a party 
who, while they despised the Judaizing Christians and 
prided themselves on being " spiritual," were in danger 
of " sensuality, idolatry, and witchcraft." The answer in 
the Epistle to the Eomans (vi. 1) to the question "Shall 
" we continue in sin that grace may abound ? " proves 
that there was a fear even then of that which is implied 



218 THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

to have actually taken place in a later period that there 
were things in the Epistles of St. Paul hard to he under- 
" stood, which the unstable and unlearned had wrested to 
" their own destruction." 

But stiff and unaccommodating as was the more Pharisaical 
form of Judaism to foreign usages, there was yet more than 
one point of view in which it lent itself to the corrupt prac- 
tices and excesses of heathenism. The language of the 
older prophecies which had spoken " of the law going forth 
" from Jerusalem, and of the riches of the Grentiles flowing 
" into her, — of Gentiles coming to her light and kings to 
*' the brightness of her rising, — of the dromedaries of Midian 
" and Ephah, the flocks of Kedar, and the rams of IS'ebaioth, 
" her gates open continually, all nations and kingdoms fear- 

ing her;" conveyed, as is well known, to the carnal minds 
of the later Jews, far different notions of universality and 
magnificence than those with which we are familiar through 
the application of it by the Christian Apostles. It was to 
them a universality not of spiritual, but of temporal domi- 
nion ; it was a felicity not of moral and religious blessings, 
but of outward and worldly pleasures. Such was the vision 
which floated before the more aspii'ing spirits amongst the 
purely Jewish zealots in their last desperate endeavour to 
throw off the Roman yoke in the war with Titus ; such, 
when translated into a different form, was the gross concep- 
tion of the millennial reign of Christ entertained by the 
Judaizing Cerintbus. With such feeliugs as these it is easy 
to conceive how to the Jewish Christians the all-absorbing 
comprehensiveness, the all-overpowering energy of the Church 
might seem to furnish a mean for promoting their object, 
which was denied to them by the fixed rigidity of the 
Synagogue. "Whether or not they intended ultimately to 



T 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16. 



THE JTTDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 219 

receive Jesus of Nazareth as the true Messiah, whether or 
not their whole nation would at once acknowledge Him 
when He returned, as they hoped, in earthly splendour to 
take His seat on the throne of David, they might still use 
His name as a watchword for gathering round them the 
allies whom in the hour of triumph they might discard or 
retain at their pleasure. 

Such is the general form which we can imagine to have 
heen assumed hy the Jewish nucleus of these heresies. It 
now remains to justify it in detail through their various 
manifestations. 

That the earliest indication of this revolutionary move- 
ment, which has heen noticed in the city of Eome itself, 
was, if not predominantly, at least to a great extent, Jewish 
in its origin or its connexions, may he inferred not only from 
the generally Judaic character implied in the readers of the 
Epistle to the Eomans, more so than in any other Epistle 
except those to the Galatians and Hebrews, hut also from 
the context of the passage itself which contains the warning 
in question. " Owe no man anything, for he that loveth 
^' hath fulfilled the law ; for this, * Thou shalt not kill, thou 
" ' shalt not steal,' is briefly comprehended in this saying, 

' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,' " — is an ad- 
dress which, standing as it does in the very midst of the ex- 
hortations to obedience and to purity, could hardly have been 
used unless those who needed these exhortations had them- 
selves acknowledged the authority of the Mosaic law. And 
the contrast between the earthly and spiritual empire, im- 
plied, as was above noticed, in Phil. iii. 19, 20, could apply 
to nothing so well as to the outward and carnal dominion, 
which was the object of the aspirations of the Judaizers. 
Nor again is there anything in such a view contradictory to 
the allusions to this movement preserved in heathen histo- 
rians. The expression of Suetonius (Claud. 25,) that the 
Emperor Claudius expelled " the Jews from Eome in con- 



220 



THE JUDAIZEES OF TFE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



" sequence of their tumultuary proceedings at the instigation 
of Chrestus," evidently has reference to some such at- 
tempts; the name of Chrestus indicating its connexion with 
Christianity, the mention of the Jews indicating its Jewish 
origin, which would be the more certain if we would iden- 
tify this with the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, which 
brought Aquila^ to Corinth. (Acts xviii. 2.) And with re- 
gard to the expressions of Tacitus on the persecution by ^ero, 
(Ann. XV. 44,) besides the more general excuse for them 
which has been already noticed, it is at least not an impro- 
bable conjecture of a recent historian ^ that when the Jewish 
" part of the Christian community saw the great metropolis 
of the world blazing like a fiery furnace before their eyes, 
" the Babylon of the west wrapped in one vast sheet of de- 
stroying flame, they may have looked on with something 
" of fierce hope and eager anticipation, they may have re- 
garded it as the first indication of the coming of the Lord 
to judge the world in fire, as the opening of that kingdom 
" which was to commence with the discomfiture of hcathen- 
" ism," and to conclude with the millennial triumph. 

It is however when we turn to the Asiatic stage of the 
heresies that their Jewish parentage is most evident. In 
the Epistle to Titus this is stated in express words, where 
the "unruly talkers and deceivers" are said to be specially 
" of the circumcision," (i. 10,) and their false teaching is 
directly connected with "Jewish fables and commandments 
" of men," (i. 14,) with "foolish questions, and genealogies, 
" (probably of Levitical families,) and contentions, and striv- 
" ings about the law." (iii. 9.) These expressions would of 

^ It has sometimes been said that Aquila had been a follower of 
Simon Magus (Burton's Eccl. Hist. i. 185), but this rests on a con- 
fusion between him and the (apparently) imaginary character in 
Clem. Kec. II. 1. vii. 33. 

» Milman, Hist, of Christianity, ii. 37, book ii. c. 3, (and also the 
whole survey of the period in Eenan's "Antichrist," c. v., vi., vii.) 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 221 



themselves almost be sufficient to prove a similar origin in 
the almost exactly similar evils mentioned in the Second to 
Timothy, (comp. especially 2 Tim, iii. 6, with Tit. i. 11 ; 
2 Tim. iv. 4, with Tit. i. 14,) and the First Epistle of St. 
Peter, (comp. especially 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14, with Tit. iii. 1.) 
In the latter Epistle moreover it admits of a distinct proof 
from the origin of those who are described as its readers. 
To maintain indeed that the strangers scattered throughout 
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, were ex- 
clusively Jews of the dispersion, is hardly consistent with 
the assertion that their former religion had been ''a vain 
conversation received by tradition from their fathers," 

{fxaTaia dvaoTp6(f)rj TrarpoTrapadoTos, i. 18,) that "in time past 

" they were not the people of God," (ii. 10,) and that they 
once " wrought the will of the Gentiles, walking in lascivi- 
" ousness, lusts, revellings, banquetings, and abominable ido- 
" latries," (iv. 3.) But when we consider the close intermix- 
ture of the Jewish settlers with the native inhabitants of the 
Gentile countries which has been described above, — their 
great numbers and influence in these very countries, — the 
almost complete identification with them, even amongst those 
who had been wild semi-barbarian idolaters, (Gal iv. 8,) 
which is implied in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, — the 
familiarity with the Old Testament and with Jewish customs 
^^ hich is presupposed throughout this very Epistle, — it is na- 
tural to suppose, especially in a letter from the great Apostle 
of the circumcision, that the nucleus, the mainspring of these 
Asiatic Churches, and consequently of these Asiatic heresies, 
was not Gentile but Jewish. If we could rely with confi- 
dence on the natural inference from 2 Pet. iii. 1, that the 
Second Epistle of St. Peter was addressed to the same readers 
as the First, then what has just been said would necessarily 
include the censures contained in this and the corresponding 
Epistle of St. J ude. But in consideration of the obscurity 
which hangs over the origin and composition of both, it will 



222 



THE JUDAJZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



be safer to derive tlie proof of the Judaic connexion of the 
heresies which they attack, partly from their likeness to those 
already mentioned, partly from the Jewish allusions (see es- 
pecially Jude 9, 14) with which both abound, chiefly from 
their exact coincidence above pointed out with those in the 
Apocalyptic Churches, (Rev. ii. 14, 20,) where it was not so 
much the revolutionary spirit, as the profession of magical 
arts, that was spoken of as associated with the licentious 
practices common to all these forms of evil. That the use 
of sorcery, however stfongly forbidden by the Law, was ge- 
nerally prevalent amongst the Jews at this period is too well 
known to admit of elaborate proof; the very name of Cab- 
bala — the semi-Jewish origin of Simon Magus — the seven 
Jewish exorcists at Ephesus, — the magical wonders supposed 
to be wrought by those possessed of the mysterious name of 
God, are all familiar instances of it. That it actually was so 
in this particular case is certain from the express language of 
the Apocalyptic vision, " I know the blasphemy of them 
" which say they are Jews and are not, but are the syna- 
" gogue of Satan." (ii. 9 ; comp. ii. 13, 24, iii. 9 ; and com- 
pare the false claim to be Apostles (ii. 2,) with the lan- 
guage of the Judaizers in 1 Cor. xi. 5, 13, 23; xii. 11.) 

What was the precise meaning of the acts ascribed to them 
which likened their sin to that of Balaam, (Rev, ii. 14,) whe- 
ther it was that they were themselves guilty of expressly 
transgressing the apostolical decree, and indulging in the 
sacrificial feasts and accompanying sensualities of the hea- 
then worship, thus combining the excesses of the Gentile 
with the fanaticism of the Jewish party ; or whether they, 
in their hostility to the true Christians whom they regarded 
as their rivals, tempted them to do so by laying accusations 
against them before heathen magistrates, is not clear. Pro- 
bably both may have existed together, exactly as the earlier 
Judaizing or Jewish zealots, who were themselves bent on 
destroying the Roman empire, did not scruple to use this 



THE JTJDATZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 223 

very charge as a pretext to the Bomans for the destruction 
of St. Paul, and of our Lord Himself. (Acts xvi. 20 ; Matt, 
xxiv. 5 ; John xix. 12.) Both crimes however are alike com- 
patible with a Jewish origin. If we suppose them to have 
tempted the Christians " to eat meats offered to idols and to 
" commit fornication" by their own example, then it is 
parallel with the warning given nearly at this same period 
even to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine, "Follow peace 
" with all men," (i.e. do not think it necessary to enter on 
hostile aggressions against any one, not even against the 
heathen E-omans,) " and holiness, without which no man 
" shall see the Lord," (i.e. but at the same time do not so 
mix yourselves up with them as to lose that purity (dylaafiov) 
which is to Christians what ceremonial holiness was to the 
Jews, comp. 1 Thess. iv. 3, 4, 7 ; Matt. v. 8 ;) "looking dili- 
" gently lest any man fail of the grace of Grod, lest any root 
" of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many 
" be defiled," (i.e. in evident allusion to Deut. xxix. 18 ; 
lest any of you should go after heathen customs, and by his 
example lead any into their polluting sins;) "lest there be 
" any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one 
" morsel of meat sold his birth-right," (i.e. lest any of you 
for the sake of his temporary gratification in the sacrificial 
feast, fall into the sins by which these feasts are so often 
accompanied, comp. 1 Cor. viii. 13; vi. 13.) And apparently 
there is a similar allusion to these practices in the last chap- 
ter, (xiii. 9.) "Be not carried away with divers and strange 
" doctrines. Por it. is a good thing that the heart be esta- 
" blished with grace, (comp. xii. 15,) not with meats which 
" did not profit them that walked in them," {avaarpi^ova-iv.) 
Or on the other hand if their crime was tempting the Chris- 
tians to join in the sacrifices by exposing them to the fear 
of heathen persecutions ^, this again would be in conformity 

^ To justify the application of the description of the false prophet 
(Eev. xiii. 12 ; xvi. 3) to the Judaizers of Rev. ii. 14, would be too 



224 THE JTJDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

mth what we know of the instigation of these persecutions 
not only in the early period during St. Paul's fii'st journeys, 
(Acts xvii. 5 J 13,) but at this very period, in these very pro- 
vinces. Clement of Eome asserts that Peter and Paul met 
their deaths through envy, (Sia Cv^ov,) an expression not else- 
where explained, but, so far as we can build upon it, appa- 
rently pointing to the machinations of some such rival sect, 
as the Judaizers. (comp. Phil. i. 15,) Melito expressly says 
that Nero and Domitian were prejudiced against the Chris- 
tians "by certain enchanters," {vtto ^aa-Kavcov rivcdv dvOpSircov,) 
a phrase which exactly coincides with the sorcerers and fol- 
lowers of Balaam in the passages before us. In the account 
of the martyrdom of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, one of the 
very Churches where these Judaizers existed in the greatest 
force, it is said that the Jews no less than the heathens joined 
in the shout which went up on the appearance of the aged 
martyi^, ''This is the teacher of all Asia, the overthrower of 
" our gods, who has perverted so many from sacrifice and 
" from adoration of our gods;" and that they howled with 
savage joy around the funeral pile whose material they had 
themselves eagerly collected. 

The Answer to these Heresies in the General Epistles of 
St. Peter and St. Jude. 

Such being the form and origin of these heresies, it re- 
mains to ask from what quarters and by whose means they 
were met and destroyed? No doubt St. Paul's Epistles con- 
tained in themselves the antidote not only to Jewish Phari- 
saism, but also to this semi-Jewish, or, if we will, servile 
libertinism, which in some sense was the abuse of his own 
teaching. But it is not after the manner of the Scriptui-es 

long a digression, but it is evident how exactly the above traits agree 
with Eev. xiii. 2-18. 



THE JUDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 225 

that one Teacher should exhibit the whole cycle of truth ; it 
would not have been according to the analogy of faith, that 
St. Paul should have been the Apostle especially brought for- 
ward to correct himself. It was now that the intervention of 
St. Peter, of which a description has been attempted in the 
second Sermon, would naturally be expected. Yestiges may 
well have been preserved in this later stage of Judaism either 
of the ancient hostility to St. Paul, or of the hopes that Peter 
was to place himself at the head of that great party which 
had once, and perhaps still called itself after his name, and 
turned as of old to the example of the brethren of the Lord 
and of Cephas ; and to repress these would have been a fit- 
ting call for the exercise of the authority of St. Peter and 
St. Jude. Here too was the true place for the intervention 
of the ethical character which belongs more or less (with the 
exception of that of St. John) to all the General Epistles, or 
in other words, the writings which bear the names of the 
purely Jewish Apostles ; and what the moral teaching of 
St. James (as will afterwards appear) was to the barren be- 
lief of the Palestine Church, that the moral teaching of St. 
Peter and St. Jude might well be to the licentious fanaticism 
of these later Judaizers. "Whilst on the one hand the style 
and language of the Tirst Epistle of St. Peter, and the ex- 
press assertion of the Second, must have indicated then, as 
it has been a decisive proof ever since, that before the close 
of the Sacred Canon the traces of the dispute at Antioch had 
been virtually effaced, so the three Epistles together must 
have borne testimony then, and are a valuable testimony 
now, to the irreconcileable difference which existed between 
real Apostolical Christianity and that counterfeit representa- 
tion of it which for a time deceived the world by its rival 
pretensions. External resemblances are to an outward ob- 
server so much more palpable than inward differences, that 
Tacitus may well have confounded together the " abominable 
" superstition" and the Divine instruction, which both pre- 

Q 



226 



THE JTJDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



sented themselves to him under the common name of a new 
religion, even as Aristophanes had long before assailed as be- 
longing to the same school the basest of sophists and the 
greatest of philosophers. But as even in the case of Grecian 
history the judgment of posterity has set aside the Athenian 
verdict upon Socrates, much more have these Epistles deter- 
mined for ever the true relations once so grievously misun- 
derstood between the Apostles and their opponents ; and the 
mistake of a part for the whole which, as we see from Taci- 
tus, was natural in the reign of Nero, we ]earn from the 
Epistles of the younger Pliny to have become impossible in 
the reign of Trajan. The viper which had come out of the 
heat and fastened itself on the Apostolic age was shaken off 
into tjie fire ; the wild anarchy which then succeeded in iden- 
tifying itself with Christianity has been rarely confounded 
with it since ; and if the lessons of acquiescence in existing 
authorities which this spirit called forth from the Apostles 
in the first century were in the next pushed to excess by 
Ignatius and his followers, if in later ages they have been 
used as pretexts for undue servility, yet when rightly un- 
derstood, and taken in conjunction with the other parts of 
the New Testament, they may be well regarded as monu- 
ments of the possibility of reform without revolution, of in- 
troducing the greatest moral and spiritual changes without 
loosing the social and political bonds which hold mankind 
together. 

Lastly, as the authority of these two Jewish Apostles was 
thus employed in strangling in its cradle this monstrous birth 
of Jewish and Gentile evil, so that of the only one who re- 
mained (for the work of James the Just was, as will be seen, 
confined to a narrower sphere) was no less providentially em- 
ployed in exhibiting in the Apocalypse the only aspect of it 
which was capable of a Christian expression. Eeserving en- 
tirely the question of the interpretation of its details, it is 
sufficient to observe here that what the Gospel and Epistles 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 227 

of St. John have often been remarked to be in relation to the 
third stage of the primitive heresies, that the Apocalypse is 
to the second. It meets them not by direct opposition, but 
by adopting and redeeming all that was capable of a higher 
meaning in their thoughts and phraseology. If there be a 
worse than the Eoman Babylon to be destroyed, if there be 
a holier than the Jewish Jerusalem to be reverenced, if there 
be a reign of Christ greater than the Judaizing millennium 
to be hoped for, they are to be sought for in the true anti- 
thesis to the Apocalypse of Cerinthus, in the "Book of the 
Revelation of St. John the Divine." 

III. Thied Period. — The Gospel and Epistles of 
St. John. 

Errors Opposed hy St. John. 

The juxtaposition of these two names of Cerinthus and 
St. John brings us to the closing period at once of the bright 
and of the dark sides of the Apostolical age. It is a remark- 
able proof of the indiscriminate transference of our own no- 
tions to that time, that most readers of ecclesiastical history, 
if asked what was the most controversial period of the first 
century, would fix upon that which seems in fact to have 
been the least controversial of all. It is precisely because 
the energy of the primitive antagonism to apostolical truth 
was gradually dwindling away into the ordinary operations 
of error, such as have provoked the controversies of later 
ages, that we therefore insensibly come to regard the writ- 
ings of St. John as more polemical than those of St. James, 
St. Paul, or St. Peter. But the Apostolical controversies were 
not like ours, they were carried on not against "fiesh and 

blood," not against the mere outward figure of mortality 

" See Eus. H. E. iii. 28, vii. 25 ; Epiph. Haer. 51. 3. 



228 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



in wliicli evil may chance to clothe itself, but against prin- 
" cipalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of 

this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places," 
against the real principles of moral evil which lay at the root 
of the whole matter, and which shewed themselves in their 
naked undisguised depravity of avowed hostility to good- 
ness, and avowed love of wickedness. And if therefore in 
St. John's writings, the vehemence of St. Paul and the seve- 
rity of St. James have disappeared, it is not merely because 
the fire of the Son of Thunder has been superseded by the 
peaceful temperament of the Apostle of Love, but because 
St. James and St. Paul and St. Peter had thoroughly done 
their work, because the evils with which he had to contend, 
however malignant in spirit, were at least less rampant and 
less powerful in form, because it was ^ only a solitary Diotre- 
phes here and there, and not whole masses of Christian com- 
munities who received him not." 

This would be our natural impression if we derived our 
impression from the general tone of St. John's writings, not 
as illustrated by later theologians, but as compared with those 
which proceed directly or indirectly from his brother Apo- 
stles. Yet some form of rivalry, some hostile principles of 
evil we do seem to encounter, even here, and these, with the 
assistance of tradition, which, as shall elsewhere be shewn, 
is here more important than usual in filling up the gap 
of apostolical history, it now remains to endeavour to re- 
produce. 

Doubtless in the speculations concerning the nature of 
Christ which seemed to be glanced at in the Gospel and Epi- 
stles of St. John, (John i. 1 — 44; 1 John i. 1 ; ii. 13 ; iv. 2,) 
there seem to be traces of an opposition to the first indica- 
tions of those Gnostic errors, which as belonging to a later 
age, and to another sphere than that with which we are now 



3 John 9. 



THE JUDAIZEES OP THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



229 



concerned, it is not our intention here to notice. But the 
Gnostic sects, properly so called, had not yet come into 
existence, their first founder Basilides did not appear till 
A.D. 120, long after the Apostle was laid in his grave. So 
far as the principles opposed by St. John had assumed any 
outward and definite shape at all, it is still the same an- 
cient enemy that we have tracked throughout, it is still not 
Gnosticism but Judaism, or, if we will have the word, it is 
not yet the Gnostic pure, but the Gnostic ^ grafted on a 
Jewish sail. 

The Ehionites. 

It was after the fall of Jerusalem had stripped it of every 
other form in which it could take refuge, after its Phari- 
saical rigidity and its daring ambition had in that great 
catastrophe been alike extinguished, that the Judaism of 
the Christian Church entrenched itself in that first of sects 
or heresies, according to the later meaning of these terms, 
which is commonly designated by the name of "Ebionite." 
The very name indicates its Jewish origin, not from an indi- 
vidual leader, but, as is now generally acknowledged from 
the Hebrew word expressive of the poverty and humble 
state of the Jewish Church, the caricature (if one may so 
say) of those Divine blessings which in the earlier Gospels 
had been pronounced on the poor and the poor in spirit, — of 
those Divine privileges which in the earliest of the Epistles 
had been ascribed to the "poor of the world, whom God had 
chosen to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which 
He had promised to them that love Him." (James ii. 5.) 
And with this perversion of the social principles of Chris- 

*■ That even the later Gnosticism was in its origin Jewish appears 
from such passages as Ign. Magn. 8, Heges, ap. Eus. H. E.iv. 22, and 
the claim of Basilides to have derived his teaching from the tra- 
ditions of St. Peter. 

f See Neander, Hist, of the Church, ii. 10. (Eng. Tr.) 



230 



THE JUDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



tianity was united a similar perversion of its Divine trutlis. 
That simple reverence with which many of the Jewish Chris- 
tians may long have continued to regard our Lord, as the 
gi'eat prophet of their nation, without endeavouring to analyze 
minutely the precise nature of their feelings towards Him, 
was in this the last stronghold of all that was pui^ely Jewish 
in Christianity, hardened and petrified, according to the true 
spirit of sectarianism, into a fixed dogma, which refused to 
recognise in Him anything else than a mere man, which de- 
termined to see in Him not the fiiltilment of those wider and 
higher intimations of the Messiah in the ancient prophets, 
hut only of the technical formula of later Eabbis, according 
to which the man Jesus was indeed to be their deliverer and 
redeemer, but to be recognised as the anointed Messiah only 
when he had received the promised unction from the hands 
of the messenger of the Lord who was regarded as his supe- 
rior, the greatest of the prophets Elijah. John the Bap- 
tist, with them, was still all in all ; he had indeed come in 
the spirit and power of Elijah : from him Jesus of IS'azareth 
had received His baptism, and though they might well, ac- 
cording to John's instructions, acknowledge themselves as 
His disciples and call themselves by the name of Nazarene, 
what need, they asked, was there to go further, what need to 
ascribe to Him that more universal character, to take to 
themselves that more universal name of " Christian" which 
the Gentile Churches were now beginning to insist upon ? 

It was in Pella^, the last home of the Judaeo- Christian 
community, that this sect arose, or rather that the simple 
faith of the Palestinian Christians refused to expand into the 
higher or more universal creed of the society which was 
now about to be called in name what it had long been in 
reality, the Catholic Church. But after all that has been 



? Justin, Dial. Tryiih. c. 49. See Thiersch on the Criticism of the 
New Testament, p. 260. Epiph. H^er. 30. 3. 



THE JCDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 



231 



said of the widely- spread Jewish element throughout the 
Asiatic provinces, it would not be surprising to find traces 
of it at Ephesus, even had we not the preparation for it in 
the disciples of John the Baptist, who formed the nucleus 
of the Ephesian Church in the lifetime of St. Paul, (Acts 
xix. 1 — 6.) And so far as any definite errors are implied 
by St. John's writings as existing within the sphere of his 
teaching, they are at least as much of this peculiarly Jewish, 
as of the later Gnostic, character. The stress laid on the 
testimony of the Baptist to our Lord's superiority over him 
— the strong assertions (beyond what the other Gospels con- 
tain) of the universality of the Christian religion — the im- 
portance attached to the Divine character and mission of our 
Lord, which, so far as it can be said to have any polemical 
view, coincides exactly with the similar expressions un- 
doubtedly aimed against Jewish errors in the Epistles to 
the Colossians and Hebrews, and the First to Timothy — 
the very use of the phraseology of Philo, which, as we see 
from the Epistle of St. James i, was familiar even to the 
Jews of Palestine, much more to those of Ephesus, — all 
point to the fact which later writers expressly assert, that 
the errors against which the Gospel and Epistles were di- 
rected were Ebionite. 

It is indeed a remarkable coincidence, that, if we may 
trust the traditionary statements, the one individual form 
which we can discern in the midst of these last heresies is 
the same which we see though more dimly in each of their 
preceding stages. Cerinthus, who is always spoken of in 
such close connexion with the Ebionites as in one place i to be 
confounded with their imaginary founder Ebion, is not only 
the antagonist of St. John's latest years, but is also repre- 
sented as in his representation of the millennium the cham- 

^ See Schneckenburger on St. James. (Introduction.) 
j Epiph. H£er. 30. 25. 



232 THE JITDAIZEES OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 

pion of those doctrines of sensual profligacy which marked 
the previous period of the primitive heresies, and yet further 
back still, is stated to have been actually ^ one of those who 
in the very first beginning of the conflict came from Jeru- 
salem to Antioch, and taught ''Except ye be circumcised 
" after the manner of Moses ye cannot be saved." In this 
final conflict then of the last heresiarch of the apostolical 
Church with its last Apostle, the long struggle is brought 
to its natural close. They had met, it may be, at the meet- 
ing at Jerusalem, when John with James and Cephas ^ as 
the chief pillars of the Jewish Church, gave the hand of fel- 
lowship to Paul ; they had been confronted once again when 
the Apocalypse of each was set in opposition one against 
another, in the troubles which preceded the fall of the Jewish 
nation ; and now, on the threshold of the apostolical age and 
of their own lives, they met once more, the aged Apostle 
with the last earthly lineaments of his character purified 
away in the light of love and holiness — the aged heretic 
having descended step by step from the rigid dogma of a 
stern fanaticism through the licentious schemes of a wild 
revolution down to the hard cold scepticism, which, as it 
had been deaf before to the dictates of humanity was now 
equally closed against the recognition of divinity — the 
withered trunk, cut down already to the roots, leafless, sap- 
less, lifeless. 

Such is the representation which tradition loved to give 
of the meeting of the last champion and the last enemy of 
apostolical truth, guided at least so far by a right instinct 
that it preserves the faithful impression of the consistency 
of Judaism in which, as their one continuous outward form, 
from first to last the primitive heresies clothed themselves. 
But as in St. John's own writings no name of any particular 
sect is preserved, no individual Cerinthus handed down to 



Epiph. Haer. 28. 2. 



1 Gal. ii. 9. 



THE JUDAIZERS OF THE APOSTOLICAL AGE. 233 

infamy, so it would be safer for us to consider that, as tlie 
Judaism, which was up to this time the palpable manifesta- 
tion of evil had itself retired into a less prominent position, 
as also his opposition to it, if so it may be called, is merged 
in the general antagonism to sin as sin, to darkness as dark- 
ness ; as if to bring before us once for all in this the closing 
period of the conflict the real principles which alone had 
been at stake throughout. And if, as is likely, it may have 
been the result of St. John's work, that the false teachers 
who up to this time had maintained their ground within the 
Church were henceforth cast out from it, "if they went out 

from us because"" they were not of us," and because the 
Christians at the Apostle's bidding " would not receive them 

at their homes nor wish them God speed, lest they should 
" be partakers of their evil deeds;" yet there is still the 
higher truth to be remembered, which is implied as through 
all the Apostolical writings so especially throughout St. John, 
that the true antithesis, the true contradiction is not between 
the Church and the individual Judaizers, whether Pharisai- 
cal, revolutionary, or Ebionite, but between the Church which 

speaks the truth in love," and the "world which lieth in 

wickedness." 



« See 1 John ii. 19 ; 2 John 10 ; 1 John v. 19. 



SERMON IV. 



JOHN xxi. 22. 

Ie I WILL THAT HE TAHEY TILL I COME, WHAT 
IS THAT TO THEE? 

Whatever ground there may be for the hesitation 
with which a pious mind approaches a critical analysis 
of any of the apostolical characters^ — whatever rever- 
ence and caution may be required in conducting this 
analysis, exists in the highest degree with reference to 
the last of the Three Apostles, St. John, on whose life 
and work I this day propose to enter. The strongly- 
marked natural peculiarities which distinguish St. Pe- 
ter, the full blaze of historical light which surrounds 
St. Paul, in themselves justify and invite an investiga- 
tion of the human springs of action to which they 
were subject. But St. John's life, at first sight, seems 
shrouded in an atmosphere of religious awe which we 
cannot penetrate; in him the earthly seems so com- 
pletely absorbed into the heavenly — the character, the 
thoughts, the language of the disciple so lost in that 
of the Master — that we tremble to draw aside the 
veil from that Divine friendship ; we fear to mix any 
human motives with a life which seems so especially 
the work of the Spirit of God : it was, we may be in- 



SEEM. IV.] 



ST. JOHN. 



235 



clined to think, a true feeling whicli in the greatest of 
Christian poems declared itself unable to discern any 
earthly^ form or feature in the third of the Three 
Apostles; — we may fancy that in the answer to the 
question, ''Lord, and what shall this man do?'' there 
is contained for us, though in a diflPerent sense, some- 
thing of the same mild rebuke as was addressed to 
John's first companion, " What is that to thee ? Polio w 
thou Me." 

But the fact is, that in these natural and obvious 
feelings we have virtually anticipated all that is pe- 
culiarly distinctive of the life of St. John. The mys- 
terious characters, as well as the mysterious truths of 
Scripture, are placed before us not to perplex but to 
instruct us; and our Lord's words, if rightly under- 
stood, may invite us to the task of defining the linea- 
ments of that character which Jesus loved without 
intruding into things invisible; of ascertaining the 
true position of the Apostle of Love without insti- 
tuting any irreverent comparison between, him and 
the Apostle of Faith. It was precisely in this very 
capacity for reflecting, as in an unbroken glass, the 
glory of things Divine ; in this passive reception (so 
to speak) of the highest and holiest influences, that 
the character summed up in the name of St. John 
properly consisted. It was not by fluctuating and 

* " As he who looks intent, 
And strives with searching ken how he may see 
The sun in his echpse, and through dechne 
Of seeing loseth power of sight, so I 
Gazed on that last resplendence." 

Gary's Dante ; Paradiso xxv. 117. 



236 



ST. JOHN. 



[seem. 



irregular impulses like the first Apostle, nor yet by 
a sudden and abrupt conversion like the second, that 
he received his education for the Apostleship ; there 
was no sphere of outward activity as in Peter, no 
vehement struggle as in Paul; in action, while Peter 
speaks, moves, directs, he follows, silent and retired ; 
— his teaching is expressed not in the arguments and 
entreaties which mark the Epistles of St. Paul, but 
in the simplest forms in which human language can 
arrange itself. Every thing local and national seems 
to have passed away ; and, if in Peter we seemed to 
trace the Jewish element in its native vigour, if in 
Paul there seemed to be a development of those 
peculiar qualities which so well fitted him to be the 
Apostle of the Gentile nations of the west, it would 
almost seem as if in St. John the still contemplation, 
the intuitive insight into heavenly things, which form 
the basis of his character, had been deepened and 
solemnized by something of that more eastern and 
primitive feeling to which the records of the Jewish 
nation lead us back; something of that more simple, 
universal, child -like spirit, which brooded over the 
cradle of the human race ; which entitled the Meso- 
potamian Patriarch, rather than the Hebrew Law- 
giver or the Jewish King, to be called the friend 
''of God^ ;'' which fitted the prophet of the Chaldaean 
captivity, rather than the native seers of Samaria or 
Jerusalem, to be the "man greatly beloveds" If 
there be any outward influence visible in the mind 
of St. John, it is from these remoter regions, from 
that more primitive atmosphere that it seems to come : 



° James ii. 23. 



« Dan. X. 19. 



IT.] 



ST. JOHN. 



237 



it is in the opening words of his Gospel that, after the 
lapse of ages, we catch the echo of the same words 
which had announced the creation of all things ^ : it 
is in the close of the Sacred Canon that we hear ^ once 
again of the tree of life and the river of paradise : it 
is the most primeval traditions and images of ancient 
civilization to which, if to any outward source, we owe 
those ideas of life and death, of light and darkness — 
that blending of fact with doctrine, of the real with 
the ideal, which so strongly characterizes the writings 
of St. John. He could not by any possibility have 
been a J ewish zealot or a Hellenistic rabbi ; it is 
possible to conceive that but for the grace of God he 
might have been an Oriental mystic. 

Still, after all that can be ascribed to any outward 
circumstances, the whole sum of his character must 
of necessity be contained in the one single fact that 
he was ''the disciple whom Jesus loved." Once un- 
derstand that from whatever causes no obstacle inter- 
vened between him and that one Divine object which 
from the earliest dawn of youth to the last years of 
extreme old age was ever impressing itself deeper 
and deeper into his inmost soul, and his whole work 
on earth is at once accounted for. Whatever we can 
conceive of devoted tenderness, of deep affection, of 
intense admiration for goodness, we must conceive 
of him who even in the palace of the high-priest, 
and at the foot of the cross, was the inseparable com- 
panion of his Lord ; whatever we can conceive of a 
gentlcDess and holiness ever increasing in depth and 

Comp. Gen. i. 1 with John i. 1. 
« Comp. Gen. ii. 9, 10 with Kev. xxii. 1, 2. 



238 



ST. JOHIT. 



[seem. 



purity, that we must conceive of the heart and mind 
which produced the Gospel and Epistles of St. John. 

I. One phase, however, of his character there was, 
which might at first sight seem inconsistent with what 
has just been said, but which nevertheless was the 
aspect of it most familiar to the mind of the earliest 
Church. It was not as John the Beloved Disciple, 
but as John the Son of Thunder, — not as the Apostle 
who leaned on his Master's breast at supper, but as 
the Apostle who called down fire from heaven, who 
forbade the man to. cast out devils, who claimed with 
his brother the highest places in the kingdom of hea- 
ven that he was known to the readers of the three 
first Gospels. But in fact it is in accordance with 
what has been said, that in such a character the more 
outward and superficial traits should have attracted 
attention before the complete perfection of that more 
inw^ard and silent growth which was alone essential 
to it ; and, alien in some respects as the bursts of 
fiery passion may be from the usual tenor of St. John's 
later character, they fully agree with the severity, al- 
most unparalleled in the New Testament, which marks 
the well-known^ anathema in his Second Epistle, and 
the story, which there seems no reason to doubt, of 
Cerinthus and the bath. It is not surprising that 
the deep stillness of such a character as this should, 
like the oriental sky, break out from time to time 
into tempests of impassioned vehemence ; still less that 
the character which was to excel all others in its de- 
voted love of good should give indications — in its 

^ Luke ix. 49 ; Mark ix. 38 ; x, 37. 
^ 2 John 10 ; see Essay ou the Traditions concerning St. John. 



IV.] 



ST. JOHIf. 



239 



earlier stages even in excess — of that intense hatred 
of evil, without which love of good can hardly be 
said to exist. 

But, though this is only a temporary and sub= 
ordinate feature of the Apostle's character, there is 
yet one point of view where it meets us at once at 
the exact stage which we have now reached in this 
sketch of the apostolical age, and which though later 
than the end of St. Peter and St. Paul^ is yet the first 
beginning of the work of St. John. 

It was not till the removal of the first and the 
second Apostle from the scene of their earthly labours 
that there burst upon the whole civilized world that 
awful train of calamities^, which breaking as it did 
on Italy, on Asia Minor, and on Palestine, almost 
simultaneously, though under the most difierent forms, 
was regarded alike by Eoman, Christian, and Jew, as 
the manifestation of the visible judgment of God, It 
was now, if we may trust the testimony alike of in- 
ternal and external proof, in the interval^ between 

^ For these calamities, and the effect produced by them on those 
who witnessed them, compare, in Palestine, Joseph. B. J. vi. 5. 3 ; 
Luke xix. 43 ; xxi. 20—24 ; xxiii. 28—30 : in Asia Minor, 1 Pet. iv. 
12 — 19 ; Eev. ii. 10, 13 ; iii. 10 : in the Empire generally. Matt. xxiv. 
6, 7 ; Tac. Hist. i. 1, 2. 

• To enter into the proofs of the date of the Apocalypse here as- 
sumed as the most probable, would involve too long a discussion, 
especially as it involves more or less the whole question of the in- 
terpretation of the book itself, which had better be reserved for 
another occasion: I will content myself therefore with stating the 
general grounds of this opinion, and for the details refer to Liicke's 
Introduction to the Apocalypse, and Eenan's work on the Antichrist 
of the ApostoUc age. 

1. The extremely Hebraistic character of the language, beyond that 



240 



ST. JOHJT. 



the death of Nero and the fall of Jerusalem, when 
the roll of apostolical epistles seemed to have been 
finally closed, when every other inspired tongue had 
been hushed in the grave, that there rose from the 
lonely rock of Patmos that solemn voice which mingled 
with the storm that raged around it, as the dirge of 
an expiring world ; that under the " red and lowering 
" sky'' which had at last made itself understood to 
the sense of the dullest, there rose that awful vision 
of coming destiny which has received the expressive 
name of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. 

This is not the place and time to enter on the origin 
and object of that mysterious book. But, if it be as- 
cribed to the author of the Fourth Gospel, and if we 
identify both with the beloved disciple, it may fairly 
be asked, whether we may not trace a congeniality 
to the earlier phase of the Apostle's life, as described 
in the earlier Gospel, and in the Acts; whether in 
the thunderings and lightnings and voices which pro- 
ceeded out of the throne, — in the cry "How long, 
"O Lord, holy and true!" — in the thrones on the 

of any other part of the New Testament, best agrees with a date long 
previous to that of the Gospels and Epistles. 

2. The troubles described in the book as impending over the Chm-ch 
not at some distant period, but immediately, (Eev. i. 9 ; xxii. 6, 7, 10, 
12, 20,) refer to no historical event so naturally as the destruction of 
Jerusalem described almost in the same language in the three first 
Gospels. 

3. The indication of the exact time fm-nished by the book itseK, 
(Eev. xvii. 10,) if we assume the most natural interpretation which 
the words will bear, would fix it to the year a.d. 68, or 69. 

4. The external testimony referring it to the time of Nero has 
at least as much weight as that which refers it to the reign of 
Domitian. 



IT.] 



ST. JOHN. 



241 



right hand and the left, and the armies clothed in 
white, — we may not see ^ something like the flash, the 
last expiring flash, it may be, of the Son of Thunder? 
May we not in these words be justified in recognising 
the same accents that we remember from the impatient 
disciple in the earlier Gospels, now used, however, to 
express not the transient feelings of human indigna- 
tion, but the solemn message of inspired revelation ? 
May we not enquire whether in the wild Oriental ima- 
gery, in the peculiarly Hebraic character, both of style 
and thought, in the true apostolical counterpart which 
it presents to those carnal dreams of earthly dominion, 
which the troubled aspect of the times had brought to 
their highest pitch in the Judaizing spirit of this epoch, 
there is anything really incongruous with the mission 
of St. John ? whether he who had been up to this time 
an Apostle solely of the circumcision, and had, in this 
sense at least, tarried till his Lord was come, might not 
now for a moment be rapt out of himself and of his 
own especial sph ere, to utter the last voice of Divine 
judgment over the catastrophe which, by a Christian 
of that age, could almost without a figure be called 
the end of the then existing world, to sing the coming 
triumph of a holier even than the earthly Jerusalem 
over a greater even than the Roman Babylon ? 

II. But there was a higher sense in which the Lord 
was yet to come, in which, according to no subordinate 
circumstance, but to the inmost essence of his character, 
the beloved disciple was to be the Apostle of the latter 
days. The clouds which had gathered so darkly round 

-Comp. Mark iii. 17 ; Luke ix. 54 ; Kev. v. 5 ; xi. 19 ; xvi. 18 ; 
vi. 10 ; xix. 14 ; xx. 4. 

R 



242 



ST. JOHN". 



[seem. 



the Apocalyptic vision rolled away, and we now enter 
on that final period which is emphatically, according 
to any view which may be taken of the traditions of 
this period, the age of John. He alone of the Three 
now survived : if here and there some Diotrephes ^ 
might be found to dispute his authority, still, gene- 
rally speaking, unlike that of his two predecessors, 
it must have been unquestioned ; he full of years 
and of holiness must have been truly the father of the 
new generation of Christians, and they his "little 
" children ^ to him, in his Ephesian retreat in the 
metropolis of the Asiatic Churches, which were them- 
selves the centre of Christendom, every eye must have 
been turned with the feeling that now, if ever, was the 
time when he should break his silence — when his ap- 
pointed work was fully come. Nero and the tyrants 
who had succeeded him on the imperial throne were 
swept away ; and no Peter was needed to revive the 
hope of an infant and persecuted Church. J erusalem 
had perished, and in its ruin was broken the strength 
of that Judaic spirit which had so vehemently struggled 
against St. Paul. There was nothing within or without 
the Church to break the profound peace in which the 
whole world reposed at the commencement of the reign 
of Trajan, and which seemed as if providentially de- 
signed for the atmosphere in which this epoch of Chris- 
tian history should receive its final completion. 

Whatever were the needs of this last period were 
not outward, but inward ; trials not of the flesh, or of 
the world, but of the spirit ; the temptation not of the 

* 3 John 9. See the 1st Ep. of St. John passim, and for the 

address to the Christians in the assembly, and to the young robber, 
see Essay on the Traditions of St. John. * 



IV.] ST. JOHN. 243 

hungry wilderness, nor of the view from the exceed- 
ing high mountain, but of the pinnacle of Cfod^s holy- 
temple, of presumptuous speculation and slumbering 
conscience, A new generation of Christians had now 
appeared, to which the thoughts and feelings of the 
first were unknown; "fathers and young men"'^ are 
alike addressed in St. John's Epistle as having grown 
up in Christian education ; very few now remained who 
had seen the face of the Lord Jesus ; between the earlier 
and the present state of Christian Society, if by no 
other cause at least by the destruction of Jerusalem, 
there seemed to be fixed a chasm as of many centuries; 
and what wonder if in the place of that Divine history 
now growing dim in the distance, there should have 
arisen those portentous shadows of oriental speculation 
which afterwards deepened into the Gnostic heresies of 
the second century, but which even now were chasing 
each other to and fro across the field of the Eastern 
Churches ? what wonder if in the place of that fervent 
zeal, which marked even in excess the conduct of the 
earliest Christians, we find iniquity abounding and the 
love of many waxing cold, and faith and holiness which 
to St.PauFs view had seemed absolutely indivisible, now 
falling asunder from each other in that fatal disunion 
which is deplored through all the Epistles of St. John ? 
And now what were the weapons with which these 

" 1 John ii. 12 — 14. See Liicke's commentary on the passage, from 
which it would appear that the phrase "httle children," is used as 
a general designation of the disciples, to whom in each case a general 
address precedes the more particular appeal to the earlier and 
later generations of the Apostle's hearers, spoken of respectively as 
"fathers" and "young men." 



244 



ST. JOHN. 



[seem. 



evils were combated by tbe sole surviving Apostle of 
the Christian Church? We must remember that com- 
pared with the mortal conflict which was waged by 
St. Paul in the Epistles to the Corinthians and Gala- 
tians against his Jewish opponents, or with that wbich 
was sustained in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. J ude 
against the revolutionary sects which threatened to 
shake the foundations alike of moral and religious 
society, the age of St. John, so far from being in itself 
a time of fierce controvers}^, seems much rather, both 
in the evils attacked and the mode of attacking them, 
to partake of the general tranquillity of the whole 
period, ' moving towards the stillness of its rest,' 
gradually softening away into that deep silence which 
succeeds immediately to the apostolic age, " that silence 
" as it were about the space of half an hour," during 
which we hear and know hardly any thing, till it is 
broken by the din of the angry combatants in the 
middle of the next century. It is then in exact ac- 
cordance with, the wants and circumstances of the age, 
no less than with his own character, that the chief 
form in which the beloved disciple inculcated Chris- 
tian truth, was not that of a polemical Epistle, but an 
historical Gospel ; was not the assertion of any prin- 
ciple however deep, of any morality however exalted, 
but the description in all its fulness of the Person of 
Jesus Christ. This is the subject of his Gospel, and to 
this his Epistles converge. Previous Evangelists had 
given to the Church that which the Church had then 
most needed ; the cycle of the warnings, the precepts, 
the miracles, the external ministrations of the Lord 
had been preserved in what we now know as the 



ST. JOHN, 



245 



teacliing of the three first Gospels. But the Life, as 
a whole — the outer life, with the distinct stages of 
progressive interest from passover to passover, and all 
the several steps that led to the final issue — the inner 
life, with the Divine discourses which represented not 
merely the wisdom of the earthly prophet, but the 
glory which He had with the Father before the world 
was — the life, not as seen only by Jewish eyes, and in 
connexion with Jewish feelings^, but as intended to be 
the source of life to the whole world — this was pre- 
cisely what we might expect from St. John ; the Be- 
loved Disciple, and the Last of the Apostles. It was 
as though the recollections of his youth, which to the 
minds of all else were waxing faint, came back upon 
him in the loneliness of his declining years with all 
their original vividness : no greater treasure could he 
bequeath to the world, which seemed as it were to 
have had a new term added to its existence, than a 
faithful historical record of those scenes that would 
else have perished with him out of human memory : 
no fitter antidote could he furnish alike for the intel- 
lectual and moral perversions of his age, than that 
which in a measure had been already urged in the 
later Epistles of St. Paul, as the remedy to the same 
incipient evils, — the complete representation of the 
Word made flesh. 

But to meet such tendencies as those with which 
St. John was surrounded, no belief in mere facts, how- 
ever great, was sufficient : the errors of his day had 
arisen from speculating not on the facts themselves, 
but on the ideas which the facts represented ; the sins 
of his day had arisen not merely from an outward for- 
o See Herder on the Gospel of St. John, p. 362. 



246 



ST. JOHN-. 



[seem. 



getfulness, but from an inward unbelief of tbe great 
end for which the facts took place. Still, therefore, 
keeping his stand on the immoveable historical ground 
of " Jesus Christ come in the flesh" as the one central 
truth of all, both in the Gospel, and in the first Epi- 
stle which seems to have accompanied it as a practical 
comment, he passes over every thing merely outward 
or local ; institutions, miracles, actions, are only men- 
tioned in the higher truths which they represent, or 
else introduced only for the sake of those truths ; the 
earthly things of the previous Gospels are, as has been 
well said, transfigured in the fourth ; they, as the early 
Christian writers expressed it, are of the body; his, is 
of the Spirit. The flood of speculations from the East, 
which, in the central city of Ephesus blended with 
the advancing tide of Platonizing philosophy from the 
West, he met not merely by opposing them, but by ac- 
knowledging and reproducing in the light of Chris- 
tian faith whatever there was of truth in them. With 
that natural approximation, which I have already ven- 
tured to describe in his character, to the simplest and 
purest forms of Eastern contemplation, it is impossible 
not to recognise in his phraseology the imagery, and 
even the words, of the Oriental philosophies transferred 
to the most sublime and awful subjects of Christian 
theology ; and it is a curious proof of this outward 
coincidence between them, that for the first hundred 
years after the publication of St. John's Gospel there 
are more indications of the high estimation in which 
it was held amongst the Gnostic sects p than in the 
bosom of the Church itself. 

p The first commentary on St. John's Gospel was that of Heracleon. 
See Thiersch, p. 192 ; Lange on the Gospels, i. 170. 



ST. JOHN. 



247 



Yet it seems almost like profanation to bring such 
a subject into any connexion, however remote, with 
the debased Orientalism of the Ephesian schools ; and, 
in strict historical truth, the gulf between Caiaphas 
and Peter, between Gamaliel and Paul, is not so deep 
as that between Cerinthus and St. John. It was not 
enough that this later age should bring out in all its 
clearness the facts of the Gospel history, or that its 
peculiar tendencies should meet with a character whose 
natural turn enabled him to understand and correct 
them ; it must bring out St. John himself, the St. John 
who beyond any other of the sons of men had received 
the impression of the Divine character; in whom all 
that there had been of earthly or of selfish in the Son 
of Thunder had melted away in the softening light of 
growing perfection ; in whom all merely outward and 
intellectual elements were swallowed up in the con- 
templation of things spiritual and eternal. It was 
doubtless no undesigned or useless lesson to this last 
period of the apostolic age, that when the eyes of men 
turned to the head of the Christian world they saw 
there enthroned not the activity and zeal of Peter, 
nor even the faith and wisdom of Paul, but the love 
and goodness of John. Then, when the Church was 
about to enter on that period of God^s ordinary Pro- 
vidence in which it was henceforth destined to move, 
there was no blaze of miracles like that which heralded 
the approach of the first Apostle ; no scenes of sufier- 
ing, imprisonment, and martyrdom, such as closed 
round the end of the second; nature went on upon 
her usual course ; there was nothing to divert the at- 
tention from the one simple unadorned spectacle of 



248 



ST. JOHN. 



moral and spiritual excellence, enshrined as if in its 
own heavenly light, irradiating every thing that fell 
within its sphere, not by the speculations of an Eastern 
mj^stic however profound, but by the crystal purity of 
a heart and mind penetrated through and through 
with the indwelling Spirit of Christ. Words and ideas 
which had up to that time suggested only the gross 
doctrines of Manichean superstition, or at best the 
complex theories of an abstract philosophy, were now 
as it were redeemed one by one from their baser earthly 
use, as they passed through that translucent atmo- 
sphere, until we have almost forgotten that they had 
ever any other than that high and heavenly meaning 
which they owe, humanly speaking, to the writings 
of St. John. He spoke of '^life and death,^^ of ''light 
" and darkness," as the conflicting elements of the 
universe ; but it was of a moral not a physical con- 
flict that he spoke ; of the birth, and life, and extinc- 
tion, not of systems or emanations, but of the moral 
soul and spirit of man. He spoke of the duty of sepa- 
ration from "the world" as the antagonist of all good ; 
but it was not the world of outward matter, but " the 
" world that lieth in wickedness." He spoke of the Di- 
vine "Word which was in the beginning with God;" 
but it was no shadowy effluence or abstract specula- 
tion that he proclaimed, but a Living Person, " whom 
" his eyes had seen and his hands had handled ;" whose 
" glory he had beheld, and of whose fulness he had re- 
" ceived ;" " who came to destroy the works of the devil, 
" and to do His Father's will." He spoke of " the 
" Spirit" which was to come and dwell with man ; but 
it was no irregular impulse, no ecstatic leader of a wild 



ST. JOHN-. 



249 



fanaticism % such as the Asiatic sects were for ever ex- 
pecting, but the Eternal " Comforter, who was to con- 
" vince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- 
" ment/^ Above all, he spoke of the union of the soul 
with God, but it was by no mere process of oriental con- 
templation, or mystic absorption ; it was by that word 
which now for the first time took its proper place in the 
order of the world, by love. It had been reserved for 
St. Paul to proclaim that the deepest principle in the 
heart of man was Faith ; it was reserved for St. John 
to proclaim that the essential attribute of God is Love. 
It had been taught by the Old Testament that ''the 
" beginning of wisdom was the fear of God;" it re- 
mained to be taught by the last Apostle of the New 
Testament that 'the end of wisdom was the love of 
' God.' It had been taught of old time by Jew and 
by heathen, by Greek philosophy and Eastern reli- 
gion, that the Divinity was well pleased with the 
sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man : it was 
to St. John that it was left to teach in all its fulness 
that the one sign of God's children is " the love of 
" the brethren." And as it is Love that pervades 
our whole conception of his teaching, so also it per- 
vades our whole conception of his character. We see 
him — it surely is no unwarranted fancy — we see him 
declining with the declining century ; every sense and 
faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty 
of all burning more and more brightly ; we see it 
breathing through every look and gesture; the one 

1 For the form which this feehng took in Asia Minor, compare the 
behef, as of the later Arabians with regard to Mahomet, that Montanus 
was himself the Paraclete. 



250 



ST. JOHN. 



[seem. 



animating principle of tlie atmospliere in whicli lie 
lives and moves ; earth and heaven, the past, the pre- 
sent, and the future, alike echoing to him that dying 
strain of his latest words, " We love Him because He 
loved us." And when at last he disappears from our 
view in the last pages of the Sacred Volume, eccle- 
siastical tradition still lingers in the close : and in 
that touching story ^, not the less impressive because 
so familiar to us, we see the aged Apostle borne in the 
arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and 
there repeating over and over again the same saying, 
"Little children, love one another;" till, when asked 
why he said this and nothing else, he replied in 
those well-known words, fit indeed to be the farewell 
speech of the Beloved Disciple, *' Because this is our 
" Lord's command, and if you fulfil this, nothing else 
" is needed." 

III. Such was the life of St. John ; the sunset, as 
I have ventured to call it, of the apostolic age: not 
amidst the storms which lowered around the Apoca- 
lyptic seer, but the exact image of those milder lights 
and shades which we know so well even in our own 
native mountains, every object far and near brought 
out in its due proportions, the harsher features now 
softly veiled in the descending shadows, and the dis- 
tant heights lit up with a far more than morning or 
midday glory in the expiring glow of the evening 
heavens. 

And now, as in the case of his two predecessors, we 
must ask what has St. John done or left corresponding 

' Hieron. Comment, ad Gal. vi. 



IT.] 



ST. JOHN. 



251 



to this position ? The immediate work of St. Peter 
and St. Paul was, as we have seen, in a great measure 
fulfilled within their own lifetime. Can this be said of 
St. John, or is it not much rather the truth that on his 
own cotemporaries he exercised hardly any permanent 
influence at all? Some check, no doubt, must have 
been given to the Ephesian heresies, some effect pro- 
duced by the sight of a life and character so divine, 
something like a respite and breathing -time afforded 
for the Church of St. Peter and the Gospel of St. Paul 
to take root before they were left unassisted to bear 
the shock of outward violence or inward dissensions. 
But half a century had not passed before, as we are 
told, the tide of Gnostic delusions broke over the Apo- 
stle's grave in all their fury; even in the school of 
holy men which succeeded him in the sphere of his 
earthly labours, the teaching of Poly carp is based far 
more on that of Paul than of John ; and what a con- 
trast between his Gospel, and the traditions of Papias, 
between his Epistles, and the letters, whether we read 
them in their longer, their shorter, or their shortest 
form, of Ignatius of Antioch ! And when from the age 
of the Apostle himself, we track his influence through 
the succeeding centuries of the Christian world, are 
we not still met by the same disproportionate results ? 
The very surface of European society, its greatest re- 
volutions, its works of art, its most splendid edifices 
bear on their very front the names of St. Peter and 
St. Paul ; can it be said that there has been any age 
which in any sense at all corresponding to this bears 
the impress of St. John ? 

Doubtless it may be maintained, and with much 



252 



ST. JOIDT. 



tmth, that this is precisely what we ought to expect : 
that it is in the still small voice that we are to recog- 
nise the highest marks of divinity: that it is not iu 
the palaces of kings, or the revolutions of opinion, 
but in the secret chambers of solitary goodness, that 
we are to recognise the influence of the last Apostle, 
St. John. Something even in the world at large must 
always have been due to the impulse which in all ages 
has been given to Christian poetry by the imagery of 
the Apocalypse, to the strains of impassioned d-evo- 
tion, — treasured up alike by both sections of the Chris- 
tian Church, — which have been formed almost entirely 
on the model of his Gospel and Epistles ; much more 
when from these we turn to the countless individual 
souls, which in life and in death his writings have sup- 
ported. There is enough, it might well be said, in the 
added gentleness and tenderness which seems so often 
to be the natural forerunner of a blessed end, — in the 
increasing glow of all pure and heaven!}^ affections 
amidst the decay and dissolution of every other feel- 
ing and faculty, — to remind us of the closing career 
of St. John ; and how many cases are there alike in 
youth and age where the very mystery attendant on 
his destiny, the loneliness, the weariness, the appa- 
rent uselessness of his course, may well read to us the 
lesson so beautifully drawn from it by our own Chris- 
tian poet ^, If I will that he tarry till I come, what 
is that to thee?" 

" What is that to him or thee, 

So his love to Chi^ist endure ?" 



" Chi'istian Year, St. John's Day. 



IT.] 



ST. JOHN. 



253 



Still we may be excused for asking whether after 
all we may not look for something more. It was, we 
know, an early, though mistaken belief, that that 
" disciple should not die it was a natural super- 
stition* which led the Christians of the three first cen- 
turies to hang over the grave, where thej^ still be- 
lieved him to lie not dead, but only sleeping, and to 
watch what they fondly deemed to be the gentle heav- 
ing of the sepulchral dust by the breath of the slum- 
berer; or which, in later times, has ever and anon 
awakened the vain expectation that he was on the 
point of returning once again to visit in bodily form 
the world which he had too soon deserted. Wisely 
indeed was it ordered that to any such idle fancies as 
these an express contradiction should be given in the 
last page of his Gospel. Yet is there not still a sense 
in which we may indeed humbly trust that he still 
lives, and that his work is yet to come, — in which we 
may even at this very time hear the sound of his ap- 
proaching footsteps, and hail the coming of a time 
when the same course of natural Providence which 
impressed so strongly on our forefathers the acts and 
words of St. Peter and St. Paul, may open our eyes in 
like manner to the peculiar lessons of the life and 
writings of St. John ? May we not still hope that the 
future has an especial share not only in the visions of 
the Apocalypse, on which this is not the time to en- 
large, but in the eternal spirit of truth and holiness 
which breathes through the Gospel and Epistles, and 
which, more than the spirit of prophecy, lifts the 
teaching of John above any particular age, and ren- 
* See Essay on the Traditions of St. John. 



254 



ST. JOBJ^. 



ders it, in the language of Chrj^sostora, the " Inherit- 
" ance of the universe ? " 

When, indeed, we look out on the world around us ; 
when we see the bitter factions, the cold indifference, 
the absorbing selfishness of the age in which we live, 
it does seem like a cruel mockery to say that this or 
anything like this can be in any sense the age of the 
Eeloved Disciple. But in speaking of the Divine dis- 
pensations, we necessarily speak not of what is, but of 
what might be ; not of the actual evils which exist in 
any age, but of the peculiar opportunities for good 
which it holds out, whether men will profit by them 
or no. How great is the contrast between the trium- 
phant exultation of the first half of the 89th Psalm 
and the deep despondency of its close ; and yet it is 
but the same subject approached from opposite sides; 
it is but the difference between the course of God's in- 
tended providence and the course of man's perverse- 
ness. Or if from this last decline of God's chosen 
people in older times we turn to that very close of the 
a[)ostolical age of which I have been this day speak- 
ing, how little real correspondence was there between 
the divine life and teaching of the Apostle on one 
side, and the worldly and carnal influences which 
surrounded him on the other ! And so with regard 
to these latter days of our own, the real question is 
whether any obstacles are removed, or are likely to 
be removed, which formerly stood between us and the 
true understanding of the Apostle's writings; whether 
there are any peculiar tendencies, which if encou- 
raged would, more than those of former ages, bring us 
into harmony with his spirit ; any peculiar evils, which 



IV.] ST. JOHN. 255 

his example and teaching seem especially calculated 
to counteract. 

To those who know what has been done even for 
the mere criticism of St. John's writings within our 
own generation, there is enough to make us ask whe- 
ther we have not at least a truer insight into their 
composition and intention than existed in earlier times. 
ITever before has there seemed so fair a prospect of 
seeing the Apocalypse delivered from the wild and 
arbitrary interpretations which had long made its 
study a byword and reproach amongst sober-minded 
Christians ; never before has the relation of the Gos- 
pel and Epistles to each other been so clearly brought 
out ; never before have the low and unworthy theo- 
ries of the polemicalj or supplemental, or temporary 
character of the Gospel, been so completely exploded ; 
nor its supreme importance, both for history and the- 
ology, been so deeply and generally recognised, even 
by those who dispute its authorship. 

But it is, after all, our own inward relations to the 
teaching of St. John which will best enable us truly 
to profit by it ; and that not by any fanciful arrange- 
ment of mystical cycles, such as belongs rather to 
Etruscan soothsaj^ers than to Christian students, but 
by the natural course of the history of the world. It 
is not that we are to expect to have an especial in- 
terest in St. John, merely because he came the last in 
the series of the Three Apostles, but it is because in 
the very nature of things the close of every long- 
protracted struggle in human society must be marked 
by tendencies more or less resembling those which 
marked the end of the, great crisis of the apostolical 



256 



ST. JOHX. 



age; and if any such, can be discerned in our own 
days, it is but natural to. turn for instruction to the 
lessons wbicb tlie highest wisdom provided under simi- 
lar or analogous circumstances ; it is but just and fair, 
whilst we shrink from boasting of our own age, or 
church, or nation, to beware of dwelling onl}^ on its 
darker side, of involving in our censure of its real 
evils the traits which it may possess in common with 
the life of the Beloved Disciple. 

Surely, when we look around upon our own later 
times, full indeed of moral and intellectual interest, 
but outwardly unruffled — without persecution and with- 
out enthusiasm — far removed from the last confines of 
the age of miracles, — martyrdom seeming to be almost 
an impossibility, — human and natural agencies alone 
at work every where ; — it is not without its use to check 
desponding thoughts if we remember that such an age, 
uncongenial as it might seem to the growth of reli- 
gious excellence, was the age which witnessed the full 
development of that character which we are wont to 
regard as the holiest amongst the sons of men. Or 
again, when we look at the intellectual temptations 
by which our times are especiall}^ assailed, the ten- 
dency to lose sight of fact and reality in shadow}^ 
systems of philosophy which we have not strength to 
grasp, the confusion and dissolution of barriers which 
once fenced round our opinions and our duties, may 
we not fairly be reminded of some of the speculations 
which beset the Christian world at the close of the 
first century? may we not be allowed to trust that 
as then in the first publication, so now in the revived 
study of St. J ohn's writings, we ma}' find our best re- 



IT.] 



ST. JOHN. 



257 



fuge from tlie distractions of the time, that as of old 
we have seen that he was the true ^ Gnostic," so now 
he may be to us for all our practical wants, the true 
Idealist of the age ? may we not hope that as the life 
of western Europe was developed simultaneously with 
the study of the Apostle of the Gentiles, so even in 
those theories and tendencies which at the present 
time often seem to stand most aloof from Christianity, 
nay even in those great strongholds of primeval unbe- 
lief with which we are yearly brought into closer con- 
tact in the regions of the remote East, and on which 
all previous teaching seems to have made so faint an 
impression, there may be some divine chord which yet 
remains to be struck, some nobler aspiration than our 
dull senses have yet discerned, which may even yet 
be drawn within the range of that highest aspect of 
Christianity, of which the Apostle at Ephesus is the 
true representative ? 

Lastly, and with a far more practical and universal 
interest than belongs to any mere speculative difficul- 
ties, it is hardly much to say that, — manifold as are 
the reflexions which suggest themselves in speaking 
of the coming age before those who in all human pro- 
bability must exercise no unimportant influence over 
it, — great as are the difficulties and the privileges of 
those who feel what it is to live in these latter ages, 
* foremost in the files of time,' — yet if the Apostle 
himself were again brought before us, there is no doc- 
trine, or precept, or principle that he could deliver, 
more immediately striking at the root of our greatest 

* So the well-known expression of Clement of Alexandria. 
S 



258 



ST. JOHN. 



[seem. 



dangers, or awakening more effectually our greatest 
hopes of good, than those last words of his earthly life, 
"Little children, love one another/' 

The words, alas, fall upon our ears, as they did in- 
deed on those of the Ephesian Christians, with all the 
triteness and powerlessness of an exhausted proverb. 
"We ask, like them, ' Why repeat once more what we 
have heard a thousand times, and what if we were to 
hear a thousand times again, can tell us nothing be- 
yond what we knew before?' But is it indeed so? 
Can any age be said to have truly realized it in theory, 
and, even if it had, is it not part of the very nature of 
the command that it is illimitable ? There has been 
zeal, no doubt, there has been philanthrope^, but can 
we say that our own or any age of the world has shewn 
such a careful consideration for the consciences and 
feelings of others, such an abstinence from imputing bad 
motives where not absolutely necessary, such a sympa- 
thy with the wants of our poorer brethren, such a deep 
sense of the misery of moral evil, of the greatness of 
moral excellence, such an earnest attempt to fix our 
thoughts and affections steadily on the one central ob- 
ject, which all must allow to be the essence of the 
Christian religion — can we say that either with our 
fathers or ourselves anything of this ever existed to 
such an extent, as to justify us in supposing that we 
have yet seen the full and legitimate results of Charity 
or Christian Love ? has it ever assumed that undisputed 
and paramount supremacy in our minds, over every 
other part of the Divine instructions, as that we can 
respond to the Apostle's own answer to this very com- 
plaint, and feel that in that short and simple saying 



ly.] 



ST. JOHN. 



259 



was virtually contained the whole sum and substance 
of the Christian revelation? 

Most true indeed is it that it is ■ ^ a commandment/' 
as he himself calls it, at once "old and new and most 
encouraging to think that, much as there may be of 
evil in the tendencies of our age, far removed as it may 
be itself from the age of Love, yet at least it is a pre- 
paration for it, if we would ooly use it as such ; it is 
not in itself the voice of the Apostle, but it is the pre- 
lude, the expectation, the hush of the audience before 
the gentle accents of that farewell speech can make 
themselves heard. 

Doubtless there never has been any age of Christen- 
dom in which forbearance has not been held a duty, 
and unity a blessing. But (to take even the very sim- 
plest case) whatever there may now be, whether in 
private or in public life, of that unforgiving spirit 
which is not so much against the perfection, as against 
the very rudiments, of Christianity, — whatever forms 
of implacable enmity, national, political, or private, — 
of injuries, long and studiously remembered, — of sen- 
sitive readiness to receive, and to offer affronts, — of 
looking on every act or circumstance of life through 
the medium of personal pique or jealousy, — wherever 
such feelings are found, as they certainly may be 
found both in nations and individuals, who pride them- 
selves on being in advance of their time, it must be re- 
membered that whatever excuses they may have once 
had, exist no longer ; it is at least something gained 
to the cause of Christian Love that they are not now, 
as in the times of Feudalism or of the Reformation, 
in accordance with the tendencies of the period, but 



260 



ST. JOHN". 



[seem. 



against them ; and that to sin thus openly against the 
command of St. John, thus sanctioned alike by Grod 
and man, is therefore, in a sense beyond what it has 
been in any previous age, to sin against light. And 
when we ascend from this the lowest and most obvious 
fulfilment of the Law of Love to its higher demands, 
is it too much to hope that here too we may be enabled 
to enter on that more excellent way by approaches 
which in former times were closed? Although we have 
ceased to enforce agreement, like our forefathers, by fir6 
and sword, — although we have ceased to tolerate dis- 
agreement, like our fathers, in indifierence — although 
the outward means of unity seem further off than ever ; 
— although divisions appear to multiply rather than 
diminish ; — and comprehensions, alliances, reconcilia- 
tions, are regarded as idle dreams ; — yet can it be said 
that in those inward means which after all are alone 
essential, any previous age has been so rich as our 
own ? Is not the gift of discerning inward agreement 
under outward difference, of distinguishing between 
the form and the spirit, of placing ourselves in the 
position of others, of trying to appreciate and under- 
stand instead of at once condemning the characters or 
systems from which we differ, — is not all this, if not 
peculiar to the present time, at least so eminently cha- 
racteristic of it, as to have changed the whole course 
of its poetry, history, and philosophy ? Nay, is there 
not something in the disruptions of party, whether 
ecclesiastical or political which, whether in this place 
or elsewhere, has taken place even within our own 

^ In allusion to the ecclesiastical events of 1845, and the political 
events of 1846. 



IT.] 



ST. JOHN. 



261 



experience, that almost compels us to look round for 
some deeper and wider basis of sympathy, that forces 
us almost in the very weariness of exhaustion to repose 
on the belief that where wisdom and goodness and holi- 
ness are, there and there alone is the Spirit of God ? 

If this be indeed so — if our opportunities be indeed 
so great, what ought to be our responsibilities, and 
what judgment should those of us deserve who have 
become the 'heirs of all the ages' only to criticise 
them in listless apathy; who have burst the barriers 
of form and opinion only to speak lightly of selfish- 
ness and sensuality ; who have lost enthusiasm with- 
out increasing in charity ; who despise zeal, because 
we worship ourselves ; who live in the age of St. John 
to be disciples of the Epicurean Cerinthus ; who have 
tarried even to the days of the Son of man, only " to 
eat and drink, to buy and sell, to plant and build.'' 
May God grant to us a truer sense of our position 
and duties, and then no evil tendencies of the present, 
no gloomy prospects of the future, ought really to de- 
prive us of the example of St. John's life and doctrine. 
It is indeed the highest consummation in which any 
practical lessons which any of us may have derived 
from these discourses find their fullest exemplification. 

* To all but one in ten thousand/ it has been well said y, 
' Christian speculation is barren of great fruits ; to all 

* but one in ten thousand. Christian benevolence is 
' fruitful of great thoughts.' There may be many 
here present to whom the various intellectual ques- 
tions on which I have touched may be wholly use- 



y Catholic Thoughts, by Frederick Myers. 



262 



ST. JOHN. 



[seem. 



less; there are none wlio cannot derive benefit, both, 
moral and intellectual, from recollecting the all-suffi- 
cient importance of that divine Love of which we 
know, even from the life of St. Peter, that the one 
condition of apostolical power was that he "loved" 
his Master " more than others of which we should 
know, even from the words of St. Paul, that though 
" there abide these three. Faith, Hope, and Charity, 
" yet the greatest of these is Charity." Much more 
do we know that it bore St. John on eagle wings into 
the Eternal Presence, and that it will bear us also, if 
only we dare to trust it. Let us not fear for visible 
institutions, or for the cause of Divine truth. Even 
here the Apostle^s life may fitly remind us that it was 
not under St. Peter but St. John that there grew up 
that framework of Christian society^ in the Asiatic 
Churches which eventually became the model of all 
ecclesiastical government ; that it was not the Apostle 
of Faith, but of Love, who was emphatically called 
"Theologos%" and whose words supplied the founda- 
tion of the most universal of the Catholic Creeds. 
Truth, if spoken in love, will not become indifierent 
to us, but its several parts will then assume their pro- 
per harmony and proportion. Outward institutions 
will not perish, but will then be used in subordination 
to the higher ends, which alone can give them their 
proper value. Former ages and ancient associations, 

^ See Essay on the Apostolic Office. 

» "Theologos," or the "Divine," as applied to St. John, is not 
used in its ordinary modern sensie, but, as is well known, in the pecu- 
liar sense which it bore in the fourth century, "one who spoke of the 
" Divinity of oxu: Lord." 



lY.] 



ST. JOHN. 



263 



future ages and lofty aspirations will not be trampled 
under foot, but will alike acquire their true meaning 
in the light of that charity which " beareth all things, 
" believeth all things, — ^hopeth all things, endureth all 
" things/' Let us not think that in the great work 
that is before us we shall need the bonds of an ela- 
borate system, and the combination of party or pro- 
fessional ties ; let us think rather, as every thought- 
ful man must think if only he looks round on the 
familiar faces of his own college chapel, that as in 
this place he would not dream of resting our true 
bond of union one to another on sameness of intellect 
or of theological schools, so in the greater struggle of 
life itself we shall have enough to occupy and to unite 
us if we have in common a due sense of those great 
practical evils which as Christians we are bound to 
subdue — and of that great moral good which as Chris- 
tians we are bound to accomplish ; that, whether here 
or elsewhere, the natural sympathy and practical co- 
operation which such a feeling cannot but engender, 
is, if we would but so regard it, our true shelter from 
the strife of tongues, until this tyranny be overpast ; 
our true refuge from the storms and waves of this 
troublesome world, until we have attained a more cer- 
tain view of our destined haven. 

And not only in the toil and conflict of this mortal 
life, but when we think of that higher life which it 
has not entered into the heart of man to conceive, 
there also it may be truly said that the veil which 
rests on the view even of zeal and faith is drawn up 
from before the gaze of Love. The curtain of the phy- 
sical world which hides it from our sight may with 



264 



ST. JOKPT. 



[seem. 



each advancing year be extended more widely and 
woven more tbickly around us ; one after another, the 
discovery of the general laws of the universe may 
throw the first moving Cause further and further back 
beyond the limits of time and space : we no longer 
hear or see Him as our fathers did, in the wind, the 
earthquake, and the fire. But, if we have that blessing 
of a loving heart which no advance of science can take 
from us, we have St. John's assurance that " we know'' 
what God is : the same Apostle who has moved Him 
furthest from our outward senses in the announcement 
that He "is a Spirit," has brought Him nearest to 
our inmost afi'ections by declaring to us that He "is 
Love." 

And yet once more, if we dare no longer figure to 
our minds the life beyond the grave with those images 
which brought it home to the mind of previous ages ; 
if we dare no longer speak, as in the middle ages, of the 
Mountain of Purification and the Circles of Paradise ; 
if there are times when the things of this world on the 
one side, and the great change efiected by death on 
the other, seem to leave no place in our thoughts or 
imaginations for the things beyond ; if ever difficulties 
like these press upon us, there is surely some comfort 
in remembering that there have been those to whom 
these or similar difficulties have been present, and who 
yet have assured us that there is one faculty at least 
which shall rise with our regenerated natures, and live 
amidst the death of all beside. St. Paul, who has told 
us that all our present powers of knowledge shall " cease 

and vanish away," has told us that — Charity never 
" faileth." St. John, who declared that "it doth not 



IT.] 



ST. JOHN. 



265 



" yet appear wliat we shall be," has told us that — 
" Hereby we know that we have passed from death to 

life, because we love the brethren." 

Yes, — even in that familiar love of our earthly homes 
which is to most of us the well-spring of our earliest 
and latest happiness — in that love of our friends and be- 
nefactors which so endears to us the scenes of our edu- 
cation here and elsewhere — in that love which in after- 
life binds us to the service of those for whom Grod in our 
several stations makes us each responsible — in that love 
which in all but the very worst of us must be from time 
to time awakened for the wisdom and goodness which 
not having seen we long to see, which to believe in now 
is what to many of us makes life worth living for, 
which to see hereafter is the great and blessed promise 
reserved for those who shall see Him as He is — in all 
these several degrees we have at least some link to con- 
nect the life of time with the life of eternity. When in 
its perfected form Love has indeed mastered self, here 
even in this life we may trust that the mortal has in- 
deed put on immortality. For of a truth " that dis- 
" ciple shall never die; " for "he that dwelleth in Love^ 
" dwelleth in God and God in him." 



THE TRADITIONS RESPECTING ST. JOHN. 



In" considering the traditions which form the ground of 
almost all that we know or are told respecting the latter 
part of St. John's life, it is important to remember that they 
cannot lay claim to the same authority as they would have 
if they formed parts of a connected narrative instead of being, 
as is for the most part the case, isolated anecdotes of which 
the purport may have been lost or mistaken by their separa- 
tion from the context, so to speak, in which they originally 
occurred. But they have contributed so largely to the con- 
ception commonly entertained of the life and character of 
St. John, and they are most of them so consistent with each 
other and with the records of the Apostle in the iN'ew Testa- 
ment, that it seemed right to dwell upon them at greater 
length in the Sermon on St. John, than was possible in the 
case of the analogous traditions of St. Peter, and also to state 
as far as could be ascertained the amount of external and 
internal probability which they severally present. And they 
possess moreover this advantage, that none of them (except 
that which was pressed into the service of the Paschal contro- 
versy in the second century) have been inextricably mixed 
up with polemical disputes. 



Tradition of St. John's immortality. 

I. The earliest recorded tradition respecting St. John 
had apparently sprung up, not like most of them after the 
Apostle's death, but during his lifetime, and professed (for 
this is the obvious inference from the manner in which it is 



THE TRADITIONS EESPECTING ST. JOHN. 



267 



reported to us) to be founded on an express prediction of our 
Lord that " St. John should never die." In this case it was 
still possible to confront the traditionary statement with the 
historical : a chapter was added to the Gospel, apparently 
with this especial object, in which the true fact was brought 
out, that Jesus said not unto him, ''He shall not die," but 
" If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" 

Whether the misunderstanding of the words of our Lord 
on that particular occasion was the sole origin of the tradi- 
tion may perhaps be questioned : it is, perhaps, most likely 
to have been in the first instance occasioned partly by the 
great age to which the Apostle seemed to be advancing, partly 
by some such expectation, as I have described in the Sermon, 
of greater works than he had yet performed : we feel, at least, 
that no such belief could have sprung up with regard to St. 
Peter or St. Paul. IN'or again, was the opinion without some 
ground of truth if we consider the earlier belief of the Church 
that the world was to end with that generation, and the 
language in which the Lord's coming is throughout the New 
Testament so often identified or at least blended with the 
images which equally describe the fall of Jerusalem. (See 
especially Matt. xvi. 28, and the explanation of it given in 
the Essay on the Promises to Peter, p. 144 — 146.) 

This last feeling however had evidently passed away before 
the time when the tradition assumed the particular shape 
specified in John xxi. 23, and it now therefore took its ground 
on the supposed saying there referred to. The coming of 
" the Lord" was now to them what it is to us, another ex- 
pression for the end of all things, and having thus limited the 
spirit of our Lord's words, the next and natural process was 
to limit the words themselves, to the new view which now 
prevailed concerning them. Yet neither the express caution 
of the Evangelist in that chapter, nor yet the contradiction 
of this story by the fact of his death, was sufficient entirely 
to eradicate it. The story of his being not dead but asleep 



268 THE TRADITIONS EESPECTING ST. JOHN. 

in his grave at Ephesus was related to Augustine by persons 
who professed to have witnessed the motion of the dust by 
the supposed breath of the sleeper (Tract. 124. in Joann.), 
and the notion that he was still living not only became a fixed* 
article of popular belief in the middle ages (Niceph. Hist. 
Eccl. ii. 42), but has been revived from time to time by later 
enthusiasts (Lampe, Prolog, p. 98), and is still partially com- 
memorated in the Greek Church in the Feast of the Trans- 
lation of the Body of St. John. But even without the apo- 
stolic refutation of it, we should have required much stronger 
proof than can be adduced to warrant our admission of a story 
so alien not only to the simplicity of apostolic times, but to 
the reasonableness of Christianity itself ; and, however willing 
we may be to regard it as the fanciful expression of what 
might have been in itself a true feeling, yet it must be pro- 
nounced to belong essentially to the region not of Christian 
history but of Christian legend ^, where it has both in earlier 
and later times found its appropriate place. 

Traditions of Character. — 'Story of the Young Roller. 

II. The anecdotes of traits of character vary in value, but 
there seems no reason for absolutely rejecting any of them. 

1. It is needless to give at length the story of the young 
robber, as given in Clement of Alexandria (Quis Dives, c. 42) 
with the assertion that it is not a fable, but a history. What 
was Clement's authority does not appear, but the internal evi- 
dence of the details of the story is strongly in its favour. The 

^ See Liicke's Introduction to the Gospel of St. John. 
Compare, amongst other instances, the well-known story of the 
apparition of St. John to Edward the Confessor and the Ludlow pil- 
grims, and again to James IV. at Linlithgow before the battle of 
Flodden, the belief in Prester John in central Asia, and the ancient 
legendary representations of the search for the body in the empty 
tomb. Such also is the aspect of it which has been so happily caught 
in Mr. Moultrie's poem on St. John's Day. 



THE TEADITIONS EESPECTING ST. JOHN. 269 



account of the organization of the Asiatic Churches with which 
the story opens has heen spoken of elsewhere, and accords as 
well with the express statement of Tertullian that St. John 
was the author of the episcopacy which existed in his time, 
as with the indications contained in the Pastoral Epistles of 
St. Paul that Ephesus with its district was the first spot where 
the government of Churches became more regularly consti- 
tuted ^. The paternal care of St. John over the Asiatic Church 
generally, old and young alike (comp. 1 John ii. 13) — the 
agreement of the general moral of the penitence of the young 
man with the distinction drawn in 1 John v. 16, and ii, 2, 
and the characteristic union of sternness and energy with 
devoted affection, which pervades the whole account, resem- 
ble the indications of St. John's character in the New Tes- 
tament. The robber-hold in the mountains agrees with the 
customs of the country both in ancient and modern times ^. 
The identity of presbyter" and bishop" is significant as 
belonging to the early state of things which by the time of 
Clement had ceased to exist. 

« It would also agree with the theory which represents the " an- 
gels " of the seven Churches in the Apocalypse to have been their 
respective heads or bishops. But for the reasons stated in a previous 
Essay, the context hardly justifies our departure from the ordinary 
use of the word in the Apocalypse. And even if we could assume that 
the word here was used for an officer of the Church, it is stiU doubt- 
ful whether it would imply the supreme governor. The angel or min- 
ister of the Jewish synagogue was inferior, not superior, to the offi- 
ciating Eabbi. (See Ewald ad Apoc. i. 19.) The deacon, not the 
bishop, is the " angel" of the Apostolical Constitutions (ii. 30). 

The chief strongholds of the pirates who infested the Mediter- 
ranean in the later times of Koman history were in Cihcia, but they 
extended more or less to all the maritime states of Asia Minor. Ap- 
pian. Bell. Mith., c. 92. See Arnold's Later Koman Commonwealth, 
i. 274. The occupation of the hills round Smyrna by robbers is 
within our recent memory. 



270 



THE TEADITIOlfS EESPECTDfG ST. JOWN. 



Tradition of Cerinthus and the Bath. 

2. " There are those who have heard from Polycarp," says 
Irenseus^ "that John the disciple of the Lord, when he went 
" in Ephesus to take a bath, and saw Cerinthus within, sprang 

out of the bath-house, without having taken the bath, but 
" exclaiming instead, 'Let us fly, lest even the bath-house 

fall in, as there is within it Cerinthus, the enemy of the 
" truth.' " This story, if regarded unfavourably, is in accord- 
ance with the spirit of two well-known passages in St. Luke's 
Gospel. "And John answered and said, Master, we saw one 
' ' casting out devils in Thy name ; and we forbad him, be- 
" cause he followeth not with us;" Luke ix. 49. "And 
" when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, 
" Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from 
" heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?" Luke ix. 
54. Or if it be regarded favourably it may be compared to 
the expression in 2 John 10, 11, "If there come any unto you 
" and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, 
" neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God 
" speed is partaker of his evil deeds." It is, however, pre- 
cisely in such a story as this, and passing through such bauds, 
that the essential difi'erence between history and tradition is 

^ Irengeus Adv. Hsr. iii. 3. Epiphamus (Hasr. 30. 25), who represents 
the heretic to be not Cerinthus but Ebion, lays stress on the fact that 
St. John's use of the bath was so unusual, as to give to the Tisit in 
question the appearance of a providential occasion for his uttering the 
anathema. This is certainly not the impression left by the account 
in Irenasus, which speaks of it without any uidication of sui'prise ; and 
is remarkable, as shewing that St. John was in the habit of frequent- 
ing the bath, which, in Greek cities, was considered a luxury rather 
than a necessity. See Smith's Diet, of Classical Antiquities, p. 284. 
Baronius, An. 74, and Suicer (Thes. Eccles., torn. i. p. 128), amusingly 
endeavour to reconcile the conflicting statements of Epiphanius and 
Irenffius by supposing that Ebion and Cerinthus may both have been 
in the bath, not knowing that Ebion was an imaginary personage. 



THE TEADITIOJfS EESPECTING ST. JOHN. 



271 



to be borne in mind. That some sucli event took place it is 
unreasonable to doubt. But the point of such an anecdote 
greatly depends on the circumstances which accompanied it, 
and which a second or third-hand narrator of it, especially 
when relating it for a special purpose, is likely to omit. 
"What a difference, for example, would there have been if the 
passage just referred to in 2 John 10, 11, had been handed 
down to us by tradition, without the accompaniment, For 
" he that biddeth him God speed is partaker oihis evil deeds.'''' 
That this same direct wickedness was also the character of 
the teaching of Cerinthus we have reason to believe from 
other sources, and in this aspect the story may be usefully 
employed, as a living exemplification of the possibility of 
uniting the deepest love and gentleness with the sternest 
denunciation of moral evil. But to use it simply and in 
itself as a warrant for refusing intercourse with the teachers 
of erroneous opinions, would be an assumption, which how- 
ever true it may possibly be on other grounds, cannot be 
warranted by the amount of testimony on which this par- 
ticular story is handed down to us. Polycarp may have 
reported it as we now have it, but even in his mouth some- 
thing may have unconsciously altered according to the feeling 
ascribed to him in the story related of him in this same 
passage of Irenseus (Hser. iii. 3), how in reply to Marcion's 
question whether he knew him, he answered, " Yes, I know 
" thee to be the first-born of Satan." Or again, Polycarp 
may have heard and related it rightly, but how easily may 
the genuine tone and spirit of it have been lost in its trans- 
mission through the Gaulish bishop, whose whole heart was 
in the great polemical work of his life, and who also main- 
tains that he heard from St. John's hearers that our Lord was 
above fifty years old. It may be noticed as a curious in- 
stance of the manner in which such stories grow, that Jeremy 
Taylor, after relating the Apostle's speech, adds, merely from 
his own imagination, that " possibly this was done by the 



272 



THE TRADITIONS EESPECTING ST. JOHN. 



whisper of a prophetic spirit, and upon a miraculous design ; 
for immediately upon his retreat the bath fell down and 
crushed Cerinthus in the ruins." (Life of Christ, Sect. xii. 2.) 

The Tradition of the composition of the Gospel. 

3. The story of the calling of the Ephesian presbyters 
together for a common fast when they asked him to compose 
his Gospel, and then suddenly, as if by miracle, breaking out 
into the words, " In the beginning was the word," rests on 
the authority of Jerome (De Vir. 111. 29). It is no doubt 
conceivable, but with the suspicion thrown upon it by the 
silence of Irenseus^ (Adv. Haer. iii. 1), who relates the general 
fact of his being asked to compose a new Gospel, it ought 
perhaps to be regarded as originating in a wish to give a 
tangible shape to the solemn feeling with which the open- 
ing words of the Gospel have always been regarded in the 
Church. 

The Tradition of the last words of St. John. 

4. The story, mentioned in the Sermon, (p. 250,) of his 
last words to the Ephesian Church, again rests solely on the 
authority of Jerome (Comm. ad Gal. vi.), but its exact agree- 
ment with the spirit and phraseology of the Epistles of St. 
John, and we may add, its contrast with the severe language 
so frequent in the author who records it, as well as with 
the general spirit of later times, embodied in the wholly dif- 
ferent account of St. John's last days, given by Nicephorus 
sufficiently justifies the general credit which it has received. 

' The fact, however, of the fast is mentioned by the author of the 
ancient Fragment on the Canon (probably of the end of the second 
century), preserved by Muratori, and agrees with the practice in Acts 
xiv. 22 ; xiii. 2. See Eouth, Eell. iv. 16, The scene of the incident is 
pointed out in a cave at Patmos. 

6 See especially the strange account of St. John's last days, in Ni- 
cephorus, Hist. Eccl. ii. 42. (Cave's Apostles, p. 151.) 



THE TEADITIOlfS EESPECTING ST. JOHB". 



273 



The Tradition of St. John and the Huntsman. 

5. In the works of Cassianus the monk (a.d. 420), con- 
sisting of twenty-four CoUationes or colloquies of different 
ahlbots, and prefixed to the works of John Damascenus, occurs 
a story which considering the character of the work in which 
it is found, ought hardly to be noticed amongst the usual 
traditions of St. John, were it not that it occurs in the 
regular account of his life in Fleury's Ecclesiastical History 
(ii. 54), and that, although the external evidence is of the 
slightest kind, it possesses a grace and tenderness, which would 
be an argument in favour of its reception had it any other sup- 
port to rest upon. " It is said " (so the Abbot Abraham is in- 
troduced as arguing on behalf of some relaxation of the usual 
austerities of the convent on the arrival of new brethren), 
''it is said that the blessed Evangelist St. John, as he was 
" gently stroking a partridge which he held in his hand, 
" suddenly saw a huntsman approaching, who in astonishment 
at the sight of so illustrious a character descending to such 
" trivial enjoyments, asked, 'Art thou that John, whose glori- 
" ous renown had inspired even me with a wish to know thee? 
"why then occupy thyself with pleasures so humble?' 
" St. John replied, 'What hast thou in thy hand ? ' ' A bow,' 
" was the answer. * And why dost thou not always carry it 
"bent?' 'Because,' replied the huntsman, 'it would then 
" lose its strength, and when it was wanted to shoot at some 
" wild animal, it would fail from too continuous straining.' 
' ' ' Then, let not this brief and slight relaxation of my mind 
" offend thee, young man,' answered St. John, * without which 
" the spirit would flag from over-exertion, and not be able 
" to respond to the call of duty when need required.' " 
A similar speech is ascribed to an Egyptian king by Hero- 
dotus^, and the metaphor is too obvious to need an Apostle 

Herodotus H. 
T 



274 THE TEADITIOI^S EESPECTrN"G ST. JOHN". 

to enunciate it. Still, if it be, as it is perhaps most safe to 
regard it, a pure invention, we may fairly admire the dramatic 
propriety which has placed the scene in the life of the one 
apostolical character which we most naturally associate with 
all the gentler affections not less than with the more solemn 
devotions of the Gospel narrative. 

III. Such is the more general class of traditions with which 
we are familiar ; another cycle less known, and less easy of 
interpretation, are those which belong to St. John not so 
much as the Apostle of Love, but in that earlier aspect, of 
which I have spoken in the Sermon, in which he appears to 
us as one of the Apostles of the Circumcision. 

The Tradition of St. John^s austerities. 

1. The general picture of this side of his life is taken from 
the collection of stories which exist in Epiphanius' work on 
heresies (78. 14), written about a.d. 380. St. John, as well 
as his brother James, are there described as sharing the same 
mode of life as James the Just, who ''lived a single life, on 
" whose head the razor never came, who used neither bath 
*' nor oil, who ate no animal food, and wore no garments but 
" linen." This account of James is evidently taken from 
that of Hegesippus, to which reference will have to be made 
again in another connexion, and from its mention here it 
would seem to be presented to us as the type of a Jewish 
Apostle, according to which the lives of the others were to be 
modelled. As regards St. John it is probably a later ex- 
aggeration, and if taken literally, even with regard to St. 
James, can hardly Be reconciled with 1 Cor. ix. 4, which states 
that the ''brethren of the Lord" were married, and with 
Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. iii. 3,) who, as we have seen, states 
that St. John frequented the bath. It is however possible 
that at some period of his life, St. John, who as we know 
from the Acts attended the Temple services with Peter, and 



THE TRADITION'S EESPECTING ST. JOHN. 



275 



was witli Cephas and James one of the chief pillars of the 
Church of Palestine, may, like St. Paul, have conformed in 
matters of indifference to the Jewish ritual. 

The Tradition of the Pontifical Diadem, 

2. In a fragment of Polycrates, who was bishop of Ephesus 
in the close of the second century, amongst a catalogue of the 
remarkable saints whose bodies were interred in Asia Minor, 
and thus gave to its Churches a claim to be heard in the con- 
troversy concerning the time of Easter, it is said, " And John 
too, he who reclined on the Lord's breast, who became 
a priest bearing the diadem (o? iyevrjBr] Upevs, t6 TreTokov ne- 
(fiopeKcos, which is somewhat inaccurately paraphrased by 
Jerome, 'pontifex ejus auream laminam in fronte portans'), 
and martyr and teacher {koI paprvs koI dLddaKoKos), he too 
sleeps (^KeKoifjLTjTai) in Ephesus." (Eus. H. E. v. 24 ; 
Hieron. De Yir. 111. c. xlv. 119.) That the neTokov or plate 
here alludes in some way to that borne on the forehead of 
that Jewish high-priest (Ex. xxviii. 36, 37) is evident, but 
what Polycrates meant by saying that St. Jobn wore it must 
on any hypothesis be very doubtful. The same thing is said 
of St. James the Just by Epiphanius (Hser. 39. 2. 4 ; 78. 2. 
14), and of St. Mark in an anonymous MS. (Passio S. Marci, 
quoted by Yalesius, 1693, p. 155, c. 7), and of the latter it is 
expressly said that he wore it as being of the family of Levi, 
which statement is confirmed to a certain extent by its co- 
incidence with the inference which may be drawn from the 
statement in Col. iv. 10, that he was a relation of Barnabas, 
and in Acts iv. 36, that Barnabas was a Levite. But if James 
the Just was the same as James the brother of our Lord, and 
if there is any ground for the very late tradition that John 
was a relation of our Lord, they must have been of the tribe 
of Judah, and at any rate it is safer to look for some further 
reason. 



276 



THE TEADITIONS EESPECTING ST. JOHX. 



That James the Just was in the mind of the early Jewish 
Christians invested with all the attributes of the Jewish 
high-priest, is clear from the account in Hegesippus, and this 
not by virtue of any Levitical descent nor of any out^^ard ofS-ce 
which he held in the Christian society, but by reason of his 
own intrinsic and extraordinary holiness of life. But the 
impossibility of understanding literally the words "to him 
" alone it was lawful to enter into the holy place," (for the 
Jewish high-priest must at any rate have entered also,) would 
almost lead one to suppose that the words are to be inter- 
preted as a matter-of-fact exposition by the later historians 
of ^ hat was really a strong figure by which the Church of 
Jerusalem expressed its belief in the sanctity of its head; in 
the same way as by a similar metaphor Symeon the successor 
of James, and equally of the tribe of Judah, is apparently 
called not only a priest, but also a Eechabite, the latter 
expression being evidently derived not from any literal descent 
from the Kenite tribe, but from the !N"azarite austerities 
which he in common with James was supposed to have exer- 
cised, and which in some important points resembled that of 
the sons of Jehonadab ^. And the same may probably be 
said of the still later addition of the wearing of the golden 
plate by Epiphanius. If then we apply this to the statement 
of Poly crates respecting St. John, perhaps the simplest ex- 
planation, and the one which best agrees with the context of 
the "martyr" or "witness" and "teacher," is that John as 
well as James was regarded as invested wdth the sanctity 
which was especially indicated in the golden plate of the 
mitre, and which up to that time had belonged only to the 
descendants of the house of Aaron. 

The statement of Epiphanius respecting St. James might 
lead us to ascribe to this story a Palestinian origin. But if 
the mention of it by Polycrates points to an Asiatic tradi- 



* See the Essay on the Traditions of St. James. 



THE TKADITIONS "RESPECTZN-G ST. JOHN. 



277 



tion, and we ask how an image so purely Jewish, could have 
presented itself to the mind of the Ephesian Christians, the 
answer is perhaps to be found in the apostolical writings 
peculiar to the period when St. John's prominence was first 
beginning to be recognised. It is in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, the Eirst Epistle of St. Peter, and the Apoca- 
lypse, that we find for the first time distinct mention of 
the High Priesthood of our Lord, and as involved in it^, 
of the priesthood of all His true followers. Such a feel- 
ing may well have regarded St. John as being in an es- 
pecial manner a representative and living witness of the 
truth which he taught, and, whether sanctioned or not by 
any outward practice of the Apostle himself, may have easily 
shaped itself into the image of his wearing the golden plate. 
Other circumstances also confirm the belief that it was a 
figure of speech, and not an actual fact on which the story 
was founded. (1.) The total absence of any such ornament 
in any of the ecclesiastical usages of the four first centuries. 
(See Bingham, Ant. ii. 7.) (2.) The fact that in Eev. ii. 
17 such a figure is actually used to express the priestly or 
the pontifical character with which every true Christian is 
invested: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of 
''the hidden manna," (i. e. an access to the manna hidden 
within the Holy of Holies, where none but the high-priest 
could penetrate,) '' and will give him a white stone," (i. e. 
the precious stone on the high-priest's breast-plate, Ex. 
xxviii. 21,) ''white and shining" (iii. 4), " and in the stone 
" a new name written, which no man knoweth saving him 
"that receiveth it," (i. e. the stone on which was written 

j For a similar figure of speech, compare the address of Eusebius 
to the clergy of Tyre, in an age when it was usual to invest them with 
priestly attributes. " 0 friends and priests of God, who wear the holy 
" robe which reaches to the feet, and the heavenly crown of glory, and 
"the divine unction, and the priestly garb of the Holy Ghost." 
(Eus. H. E. X. 4. See Liicke i. 21.) 



278 



THE TEADITIONS EESPECTING ST. JOHN". 



the unutterable name of God, and in the place of which is 
now written the new name of Christ, iii. 12.) (See Ziillig's 
Excursus on Eev. ii. 17.) (3.) The extreme facility with 
which such figures, whether preserved in word or in pic- 
tures, pass into matter-of-fact statements ; as, for example, 
in later times, of the support of a falling church by St. 
Francis of Assisi from the dream of the Pope, — as possibly, 
in the traditions of St. John himself, the story of the caul- 
dron of boiling oil from some strong expression of the suffer- 
ings through which he passed unhurt, — as in the misinter- 
pretation which has actually been put on St. Paul's words, 
"I bear in my body the marks (ra o-Wyjuara) of the Lord 
" Jesus," as though he had, like the devotees of later times, 
literally exhibited in his person the marks of the Pive 
Wounds of the Crucifixion. Had this last expression been 
preserved to us not in the words of the Apostle himself, but 
in the chance record of a later tradition, it might have been 
as difficult there, as it is in the diadem of Poly crates, to dis- 
tinguish between what is fact and what is metaphor''. 

Tradition of the observation of the Jewish Passover. 

3. Lastly, it was a tradition preserved in Asia Minor, and 
mentioned in the fragment just quoted from Polycrates, that 
St. John had introduced the practice of celebrating Easter on 
the day of the Jewish passover irrespective of the Christian 
Sunday. (Eus. H. E. v. 24.) This doubtless indicates a more 
decided regard to Jewish associations than might naturally 
have been expected from the intensely spiritual character of 
the Apostle's later writings. But (not to speak- of its coin- 
cidence with the traditions just mentioned) there is nothing 

^ Liicke refers to Cotta De lamina Pontificiah Apostolormn Joanni, 
Jacobi, et Marci, Tubing. 1754. The question is fully discussed (on 
the whole with the same conclusion) by Professor Lightfoot on the 
Philippians, p. 252 ; on the Galatians, p. 345. 



THE TEADITIOSrS EESPECTING ST. JOHHT. 



279 



incredible in the supposition tliat when he left Jerusalem for 
Asia Minor, he should still, with that reflective habit of mind 
which so characterizes the narrative of his Gospel, have re- 
curred in thought and practice to the recollections of his 
earlier years, however little we can imagine him to have 
sympathized with the attempts of the succeeding generation 
to invest them with the character of a Divine apostolical 
ordinance. Nor is there in this tradition a more decided 
indication of attention to outward forms than in those which 
ascribe to him the first formation of the system of govern- 
ment, which afterwards spread through all the Churches of 
Christendom. And it has been well remarked ^ that there 
is a natural fitness in the sanction of these outward forms, 
not by Peter, from whom they might have derived a more 
rigid fixity than was congenial to the new and spiritual dis- 
pensation, nor by Paul, whose calling was in a wholly oppo- 
site direction, but by John, whose elevation (so to speak) 
above the peculiar usages of any age or country, would 
affoid a scope for giving to them such support and favour 
as from either of the other great Apostles would have been 
either misplaced or misunderstood. 

Tradition of St. Johibs residence at Ephesus, 
and of his extreme old age. 

ly. In conclusion we may observe that all the accounts 
of St. John's later life resolve themselves into a statement 
of his residence at Ephesus and of his living to the close or 
shortly beyond the close of the first century ™. This state- 
ment, implied as it is in every story which is preserved to 

1 Thiersch's Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament, p, 319. 
For the traditions which relate to his persecution at Eome and his 
banishment to Patmos, and which are too complicated for the ques- 
tions concerning the date of the Apocalypse to be dealt with here, 
see Appendix to " Sermons on the East," p. 225 ; and Kenan's " Antir 
Christ," c. xy. 



280 



THE TKADITIO^^S EESPECTING ST. JOHX. 



US respecting St. John, and thus attested by so many inde- 
pendent witnesses, and contradicted by none'^, and with no 
possible motive for its invention, stands on a diffe:ent ground 
from any one of the isolated traditions just quoted, and unless 
all testimony subsequent to the first century is to be rejected, 
must be regarded as an historical fact. In the difficulty 
of reconstructing any clear or consistent vievr of the latter 
part of the apostolical age, it is not to be expected that much 
additional light can be gained even from a statement so well 
authenticated as this. Still it may be worth while to remark 
that so far as it goes it confirms the inferences which we 
should natui^ally deduce from the apostolical writings them- 
selves, and that, as a testimony is in some degree borne to 
the traits of St. John recorded in the I^'ew Testament by their 
coincidence with those ascribed to him in some of the tradi- 
tions just enumerated, so also this account of the close of his 
life is at least not at variance with the most probable conclu- 
sions which the history of the IS'ew Testament would itself 
suggest. 

Thus, for example, whilst any early date for the removal 
of St. John to Ephesus would have been contradicted by Gal. 
ii. 5, as well as by the absence of allusion in the Epistles of 
St. Paul, the alleged date of his removal and of the subse- 
quent position ascribed to him as head of the Asiatic 
Churches agrees, so far as it goes, with the scattered notices 
of those Churches contained in the several books of the New 
Testament, especially with the importance attributed to them 
in at least five of the Epistles of St. Paul, in the Apocalypse, 
and in the Eirst of St. Peters 

» The story of his preaching in Parthia seems to be a mere infer- 
ence from the superscription (itself a mistake) to the second Epistle, 
" ad Parthos." 

o It is not necessary here to enquire into the truth of the late ec- 
clesiastical traditions which represent Timotheus as continuing in the 
see of Ephesus till his martyrdom in a.d. 97. This story would only 



THE TEADITIOIfS EESPECTIJVTG ST. JOHIST. 



281 



And in like manner the alleged composition of the Gospel 
and Epistles at Ephesns, and in extreme old age, is the con- 
dition which wonld best suit the intimations furnished by 
the books themselves, such as the distance from Palestine 
implied in the explanations of Jewish localities, customs, and 
words — the late date indicated both by the general tone of 
the Gospel and Epistles and also by particular passages, as 
John xxi. 18, 23 ; 1 John ii. 14, — and the resemblance be- 
tween some of the views opposed and those which are at- 
tacked in the Epistles of St. Paul to the same Churches. 

contradict the more authentic statement of St. John's residence at 
Ephesus on the hypothesis ascribing to the Apostles that fixed official 
character, which in a previous Essay has been represented as not be- 
longing to them. Still any account, which confirmed the natural in- 
ference from 2 Tim. iv. 21, that the residence of Timotheus at Ephesus 
expired even before St. Paul's death, would unquestionably accord 
better with the absence of all allusions to him in the traditions 
of St. John. It should perhaps be stated that the Apostolical Con- 
stitutions (vii. 16) assume a double succession, as at Antioch and 
Eome from Paul and Peter, so at Ephesus through Timotheus and 
the presbyter John from Paul and John. Such, however, does not 
appear to have been at all a general view, and is almost equally 
difficult to reconcile with the common account of the state of the 
Asiatic Churches in St. John's time. 



[The two following Sermons in point of time pre- 
ceded the Fourtli, but from their subordinate cha- 
racter have been here reserved as Supplements to the 
Second and Third,] 



SERMON V. 



SUPPLEMENT TO SERMON II. 



E\}t enpistle of St.Sames. 



JAMES i. 1. 

James, a servant of God and op the Lord Jesus Christ. 

In beginniiig the series of discourses, in which the 
present discourse^ must be regarded as a digression 
rather than a continuation, I stated that although the 
lives and teaching of the three great Apostles comprise 
in themselves all that is of necessary and eternal im- 
port in the apostolical age, yet there v^ere other subor- 
dinate influences and characters at work, which it would 
be necessary to consider in order to the full understand- 
ing of the whole subject before us, although they may 
be regarded rather as unfolding the truths already 
indicated, than as directly revealing any new truths. 
These may be shortly summed up in the purely Jew- 
ish element of the Church of Palestine, and the more 
mixed influences of the Church of Alexandria. 

To have treated of these points together with the 
main subject of the whole, would have interfered with 
the order of the argument, and have introduced extra- 
neous topics where they would have been least needed. 

* Preaclied in the Vacation, on the Sunday before Christmas Day. 



284 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [sEEM. 

But I trust to be excused if on separate occasions like 
tlie present, I venture to call your attention to these 
important though, subordinate elements of the apo- 
stolic history, beginning, — as will be seen^ not without 
some response in the services of this day, — with the 
chief representative of the purely Jewish Church, 
James the Just. 

I. It is, I would hope, needless to employ your time 
in reminding you that the subject of my present dis- 
course is distinct from the other James, the son of 
Zebedee. Nor again need I enter on the arguments 
for and against his identification with James the son 
of Alphseus. Whether he was or was not the same, 
is of but little practical importance in considering his 
history ; it is obvious that whatever was the influence 
which he exercised ^, or the authority which he main- 
tained, it was exercised and maintained not in his capa- 
city as James the Apostle, but in those relations in 
which he is more naturally brought before us by the 
epithets affixed to his name, as James the brother of 
our Lord, — James the head of the Church of Jeru- 
salem, — James the Just; in other words, from his 
natural connection with his Divine kinsman after the 

^ Without entering into tlie details of a controversy whicli has been 
decided in so many different ways, and which never, perhaps, can be 
decided with certainty, it seems on the whole the most probable re- 
sult that James was identical with the Apostle James, the son of 
Alphseus, and that the confusion has in great measui'e arisen from 
the circumstance aUuded to in the text, that the Apostleship in 
his case, as in that of his brothers, was thrown into the shade b}^ 
his relationship to our Lord, and by his position as bishop of Je- 
rusalem. See Lightfoot on the Galatians, p. 241 — 262. 



THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. 



285 



flesh, and from his peculiar position in regard to liis 
countrymen in Palestine, whether Jews or Christians. 

How great that influence and authority was we now 
with difficulty conceive. Ko doubt if we look at it 
from the more general point of view, whether of the 
whole Jewish Christian world, or of the whole Gentile 
Christian world, it sinks into nothing before the ma- 
jesty of Peter and of Paul. But place ourselves within 
the circle of those purely Palestine Christians who still 
frequented the services of the Temple, and adhered to 
the usages of the synagogue — confine our view to the 
horizon of the favoured land, which was the scene of 
the last expiring struggle of Jewish national life, — - 
and we shall find that to whatever quarter we turn for 
information, James appears before us as the one au- 
thoritative ruler, as the one undoubted representative 
of the Christian society. If we open the cotemporary 
Christian records of the Acts and Epistles, it is to his 
decision ^ that the council of Jerusalem bows, — to him, 
as a pillar of the Church, taking precedence^ even of 
Cephas and John, that Paul communicates the new 
revelation which had been entrusted to him. If we 
turn to the later traditions of the Jewish Christians 
themselves, as preserved in the fragments of Hege- 
sippus or in the Clementine Hecognitions and Homilies, 
he appears before us as the one mysterious bulwark of 
the chosen people, — invested with a priestly sanctity 
before which the pontificate of Aaron fades into insig- 
nificance, — as the one universal bishop of the Christian 
Church, in whose dignity the loftiest claims of the 

" Acts XV. 13. ^ Gal. ii. 9. James, and Cephas, and John, who 
seemed to be pillars. Comp. Acts xxi. 18 ; xii. 17 ; Gal. i. 19 ; ii. 12. 



286 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



ecclesiastical dominion of later times find their earliest 
prototype ^ If we look to tlie impression produced on 
the mind of the Jewish people itself, we find that he 
alone of all the Apostles has obtained a place in 
their national records, whether in the simple narrative 
of his death by J osephns, or in the wilder version of 
the miracles ^ of Jacob of Secaniah," preserved to us 
in the legends of the Talmud. Whatever sanctity, in 
short, was attached to that little band s of brothers, 
which in their domestic circles, their ancient Jewish 
family life, their austere E-echabite or Nazarite cus- 
toms, still kept up the recollection of the Son of David 
with whom the bonds of earthly relationship connected 
them, — whatever veneration was due to him who in 
consequence of that connexion seemed the natural head 
of the earliest organized Christian society, — whatever 
awe was still inspired by the sight of the stern right- 
eousness of the ancient prophets, of that " justice " 
which seems to have been the peculiar distinction used 
to characterize those who lived like Simeon and Zacha- 

« See Essay on the Divisions of the Corinthian Chnrch. 

^ See the quotations in Dr. Mill's Dissertation on the Brothers of 
our Lord, p. 317. Lardner's Testimonies, vol. i. p. 197, 202. 

s It is an ingenious conjecture of Schneckeuburger, that, assuming 
the identity of James with the son of Alphaeus, we have then the three 
" brothers of the Lord" holding the same place in the apostoHcal 
body, and each marked by a surname indicative of their Jewish sanc- 
tity — James the Just, Simon the Zealot, Jude, whom he asserts (in a 
reference to the ancient Latin version which I have been unable to 
verify) to have been also called Zelotes ; and to these he would then 
add with great plausibility, Joses the Just, who evidently after the 
Apostles themselves (Acts i. 23 ; xv. 22) must have been one of the 
most eminent of the disciples at Jerusalem. Comp. Mark vi. 3 with 
the catalogues of the Apostles. 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



287 



riaTi " according to all the ordinances of tlie law blame- 
" less," — all this belonged to James of Jerusalem and 
him only. He was emphatically the " Just his 
own personal name^ was superseded by it; the pre- 
dictions of the "Just One" were regarded as fulfilled 
in his person ^ ; the people, we are told, yied with 
each other to touch even the hem of his garment ^ ; 
after the manner of Elijah^ he was reported in the 
droughts of Palestine to have stretched forth his 
hands to heaven and called down rain ; and, like the 
ancient saints"^, even in outward aspect, with the 
austere features, the linen ephod, the bare feet, the 
long locks ° and unshorn beard of the Nazarite, he was 
believed to have gathered round him the admiring 
populace to ask, as once before of one who had ap- 
peared in like manner on the banks of the Jordan, 
" What is the gate of salvation ?" And in that strik- 
ing scene, when at the close of his long life^ he is 
described as standing on the front of the temple and 
bearing witness to the coming judgment of the Son 
of man in the presence of the assembled multitudes 
who had come up to worship at the Passover, it was 
with a feeling of bitter disappointment that the Scribes 
and Pharisees are represented as rushing upon him 
with the cry, "Woe, Woe, the Just one also is de- 
" ceived and in his cruel death, the Jewish his- 

Epiph. H£er. 78. 14. 
" " They fulfilled the prophecy which is written in Isaiah, 'Let us 
" ' take away the Just.' " (Heges. ap. Eus. H. E. ii. 22.) 

Hieron. in Gal. i. 19. 
' Epiph. Haer., 78. 14, possibly founded on James v. 7, 18. 
" Ibid. See for this the Essay on the Traditions of St. James. 
■ See Essay on the Traditions of St. James. 



288 THE EFISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [SEKM. 

torian ° no less than the Christian martyrologist saw 
the filling up of the cup of guilt which was to hasten 
on the final catastrophe of the apostate nation. 

But as his sphere was limited, so also was his pre- 
eminence; with the destruction of the Church of Pales- 
tine all that was peculiar in his position was destroyed 
also. However great his influence over the immediate 
circle of his cotemporaries, it was based upon a tran- 
sient feeling which necessarily died away before the 
liigher purposes of the Christian faith. His lineage no 
doubt still won for himself and his kinsmen the rever- 
ence of those who thought more of his outward con- 
nexion with the Son of David than of their own eternal 
communion with the Son of God : the austere Symeon, 
the son of Cleophas^, was still selected to succeed him 
in his charge at Palestine ; the grandsons of his bro- 
ther Jude were still remembered as descendants of the 
house of David, in their humble occupations ^ amongst 
their native valleys; his chair was preserved as a relic 
till the fourth century ^ ; the sepulchral pillar which 
marked the spot where he fell* long remained to be 

° So, at least, Origen and Eusebius read. 

P See Essay on the Divisions of the Corinthians. 
Hegesippus apnd Eus. H. E. iv. 22. Whether Symeon was the 
brother or cousin of James is uncertain, but it seems evident that it 
was as a member of the same sacred family that he was chosen to be 
the second bishop of Jerusalem. And with this also would agree the 
austerity of his Nazarite or Eechabite hfe, (Epiph., 78. 14). See 
Essay on the Traditions of St. John. 

=^ See the story in Hegesippus, ap. Eus. H. E. iii. 20, which describes 
how they were brought before Domitian, and shewed theh hands hard 
with toil, to vindicate themselves from the charge of aspiring after 
royalty. 

« Eus. H. E. vii. 19. ' Heges. ap. Eus. ii. 22. 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



289 



seen in the dark valley of Jehosliapliat, under the 
precipice from which he was thrown. But these were 
merely local and traditional tributes to his memory. 
" Jerusalem was to be trodden down of the Gentiles ; " 
" Though we once knew Christ after the flesh, yet 
" henceforth we are to know Him so no more;" and 
accordingly there was far less in the career of St. James, 
than in that of the three great Apostles, to involve any 
eternal principle in God's government of the world ; 
there has been no great revolution of action or opinion 
of which his name has been the watchword ; with the 
details of his life, as preserved to us in the fragmentary 
notices to which I have just referred, we have now no 
practical concern; whatever is of universal import in 
them is included in the more comprehensive range of 
the character of Peter ; of the rest Scripture is silent, 
and its interest belongs rather to the historical student 
than to the Christian preacher. 

II. One aspect, however, of his character there is 
which reads to us a valuable lesson, and which is pre- 
served to us for ever as the one authentic monument 
of him which we find in the New Testament. We 
may well be thankful to the Divine Providence which, 
whilst excluding from the sacred volume the peculi- 
arities especially dear to the Palestine Jews, has ad- 
mitted into it the great Epistle, where the same general 
character indeed appears before us, but refined and pu- 
rified from the earthly admixture by which the tradi- 
tional record of him is marred. 

Let me then take this Epistle, as the true reflex of 
all that it practically concerns us to know of James 
the Just. It stands, as many of us doubtless are 

XJ 



290 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



[seem:. 



aware, according to the oldest arrangement of the 
'New Testament, first ^ in order of all the apostolical 
Epistles. And this position does in fact exactly cor- 
respond to its character, both historically and morally. 
Whether it be or be not the earliest in. time, which 
however there is much reason to believe, it is certainly 
the earliest in spirit. It belongs if not to an age,' 
at least to a mind, which knew nothing of the contest 
which shook the whole Christian society to its very 
foundations in the time of St. Paul : not only is the 
Gentile Christian completely out of sight, but the 
distinction between Jew and Christian is itself not jet 
brought to view ; the recipients of the Epistle are ad- 
dressed simply as belonging "to the twelve tribes scat- 
"tered abroad;^' it passes at once from rebuking the un- 
believing Jews of the higher orders ^ to console the be- 
lieving Jews of the lower orders; the Christian 5" as- 
sembly is still spoken of under the name of " syna- 
"gogue the whole scene, in short, is that which ap- 
pears before us in the earlier chapters of the Acts of 
the Apostles, and which I have already described in the 
Sermon on St. Peter. And as in these outward cir- 
cumstances, so also in its inward spirit, this Epistle 
coincides with the character of him in whom the 
Jew and the Christian throughout his whole life were 
indistinguishably blended together. Christianity ap- 
pears in it not as a new dispensation, but as a de- 
velopment and perfection of the old ; the Christian's 
highest honour is not that he is a member of the uni- 

^ As in Lachmann's arrangement, according to the Canons of 
Laodicea. ' See the transition from James v. 1 — 6, to v. 7, 8. 

y See James ii. 2. 



THE EPISTLE OE ST. JAMES. 



291 



versal Church, but that he is the genuine type of the 
ancient Israelite ; it instils no new principles of spiri- 
tual life such as those ^ which were to " turn the world 
" upside down" in the teaching of Paul or of John, 
but only that pure and perfect morality which was 
the true fulfilment of the law; it dwells not on the 
human Teacher and Friend, whose outward acts and 
words are recorded minutely in St. Mark, or on the 
human Sufferer, whose sorrows and whose tenderness 
are brought out in St. Luke, nor yet on the inward 
and essential Divinity impressed upon us by St. John ; 
but, as we might again expect from the position of its 
author, it is the practical comment ^ on that Gospel 
which internal evidence as well as general tradition 
ascribes to the Church of Palestine, and in which our 
Lord appears emphatically as the Judge, the Law- 
giver, and the King. 

1. It is, however, not merely the general character 
of the Epistle which accords with what we know of 

^ Acts xvii. 6. 

^ Compare especially James i. 23 ; Matt. vii. 26 : James i. 27 ; 
Matt. XXV. 35 : James iii. 2 ; Matt. xii. 36, 37 : James iii. 1 ; Matt, 
xxiii. 8 : James iv. 3 ; Matt. vii. 7 : James v. 12 ; Matt. v. 34. In 
connexion witli this internal resemblance of the Gospel of St. Mat- 
thew and the Epistle of St. James, it is worth while to mention the 
links of external tradition. Not to speak of the ascetic life ascribed 
to both of them as saints of the Judaeo-Christian Church, (see Essay 
on the Traditions of St. James,) or of the possible tie of relationship 
between them if Alphaeus the father of Matthew were, as has been 
sometimes conjectm'ed, identical with the father or relation of James 
himself— it is a remarkable coincidence to find a statement in the 
works of Athanasius, (tom. ii. p. 102, quoted in Kirchofer's work on 
the Canon, p. 202, and Thiersch's Essay on the Criticism of the 
New Testament, p. 221,) that the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew was 
translated into Greek by James the bishop of Jerusalem. 



292 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [sEEM. 

the position of St. James. Its particular time and 
circumstances equally imply that there was a mis- 
sion which its author felt that he was peculiarly sent 
to perform. It was indeed a moment when, if ever, 
the spirit of the ancient prophets might seem to have 
revived. It was, we must remember, 'the beginning 
of the end.' However early the date of this Epistle, 
it could not have been before the first manifestations 
of that terrible catastrophe, whose completion is por- 
tended to us in the Christian Scriptures by the Apo- 
calypse, as its commencement is by the Epistle now 
before us. This is not the place to trace the re- 
semblances and contrasts between these books, in most 
respects so widely different. Yet it is not without 
interest to observe that as the Apocalypse and the 
Epistle of St. James represent to us by far the most 
exclusively Jewish phase of thought and language, 
although in wholly opposite aspects, which the New 
Testament has preserved to us, so they preserve to us 
the two predominant forms of the ancient prophecies ; 
if it is impossible to overlook the likeness of Ezekiel 
and Daniel which is reproduced in the seer of Patmos, 
so it is equally impossible to overlook the likeness 
of the moral teaching of Amos and Jeremiah, which 
re-appears in the prophet at Jerusalem. It is not on 
the banks of some great Eastern river, nor on the 
desert shore of a sea-girt island, that St. James takes 
his stand. It is in the streets of the holy city, it may 
be even within the courts of the Temple itself, where 
popular belief imagined him to kneel by day and night 
interceding for his people's sins, that we must con- 
ceive this last representative of those ancient preachers 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



293 



of righteousness, — like them, if we may so far again 
trust the traditionary picture, — like them even in out- 
ward garb and form and manner, such as had indeed 
been seen recently in the forests of the Jordan, but 
which probably had not been beheld within the walls 
of the capital for at least four hundred years ^. But 
though Jerusalem was his chosen home, his view again, 
like that of the older prophets, extended to the utmost 
confines of the Jewish race. Dispersed as they already 
were in all lands, from the Euphrates to the Tiber, 
the bond of nationality still remained unbroken : to 
every true Israelite the name, the fortunes, the suffer- 
ings of an Israelite, wherever he might be, had an 
enduring interest, and therefore it is but natural to 
find that it is not his own immediate charge at Jeru- 
salem alone, but " the twelve tribes scattered abroad,^' 
who are addressed by the warning voice of this last 
watchman from the gates of Zion, not in the native 
accents of his own Hebrew tongue, but in the more 
universal language which the Macedonian conquests 
had made the vehicle of communication throughout 
the Eastern world. 

2. It was probably some immediate practical occa- 
sion, from which this address took its rise. I have 
said that, early as it might be, the troubles of the 
last period of Jewish history were already beginning, 
and it might seem, as it has been well expressed by 
a modern historian, ' as if the skirts of that tremendous 
tempest which was slowly gathering over the native 

b This also distinguishes him from the Essenes, whose customs 
have otherwise much resemblance both to the details of his Hfe 
as recorded by Hegesippus and to some parts of his Epistle. 



294 



THE EPISTLE OE ST. JAMES. 



[SEKM. 



country and metropolis of the devoted people, first 
broke and discharged their heavy clouds of ruin and 
desolation one by one over each of their remoter settle- 
ments '^Z Such, amongst others, was the train of ca- 
lamities which, about the probable date of this Epistle, 
fell upon that vast Jewish population which still dwelt 
in the plains of Babylonia, and which, unlike their 
brethren of Alexandria, still looked to the temple of 
Jerusalem as the centre of their faith, and still regularly 
sent their contributions for its support. It was, we 
may suppose, to console and sustain these, or such as 
these, of his countrymen, that St. James wrote, just 
as his predecessors had in like manner striven to revive 
the sinking spirits of the different portions of their 
nation or its kindred tribes as one by one they fell 
before the advance of the Chaldean invasion. " Count 
"it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations," "Let 
" patience have her perfect work," " Blessed is the 
" man that endureth temptation," " The coming of the 
" Lord draweth nigh," " The Judge is standing before 
" the door ^ ;" these and similar exhortations are the 
"burden" of the Epistle, which the twelve tribes re- 
ceived from the metropolis of their race. 

But we know well that now no less than formerly 
it was not consolation alone, but instruction and re- 
buke which they needed from any true expounder 

<= Milman, Hist, of the Jews, ii. 185. For the suggestion of this 
(a.d. 42) as the probable occasion of this Epistle, as well as for much 
else respecting its general character, I am indebted to ChevaHer 
Bunsen. 

James i. 2, 4, 12 ; v. 8, 9. This last passage evidently alludes 
to the eastern practice of the judge taking his stand before the gates 
of the city. 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



295 



of God's will towards them. The Gfospel narrative 
and the history of Josephus alike inform us of the 
deep moral depravity which had eaten into the heart 
of the national character, and which, far more than 
any outward cause of war or pestilence, was hasten- 
ing on their final doom. And therefore we may well 
understand how St. James was called to fulfil the mis- 
sion, if I may so say, rather of a Christian Baptist 
than of a Christian Apostle or Evangelist, to make 
them helieve in Moses, before he could make them 
believe in Christ. 

He knew that with the mass of his readers forms 
were everything and morality nothing ; that he was 
addressing a nation which " strained out gnats and 
''swallowed camels;" which "cleansed the outside of 

the cup and platter, but within was full of extortion 

and excess;" which ''made its boast in the law, and 
''yet through breaking the law was a dishonour of 
''God®." And therefore in the true spirit of that 
Divine discourse in St. Matthew's Gospel, which is 
the true model of his teaching, he asserted^ the 
depth and unity of the moral law, that " whoso- 

ever shall offend in one point, he is guilty of all ;" 
that "he who has shewed no mercy shall have judg- 
" ment without mercy ;" that the " pure and un- 
" defiled^' service ^ of God is not to use many ablu- 

« Matt, xxiii. 24, 26 ; Eom. ii. 23. 

^ James ii. 8 — 11. Comp. Matt, v, passim. 

e &p7iaKeia KaOdpos Kal a/n'iavTos, James i. 27. " The outward ser- 
" vice of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies, and ceremonial vest- 

ments of the old law had morality for their substance. They 
^' were the letter of which morality was the spirit, the enigma of 
" which morahty was the meaning. But morality itself is the service 



296 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



[seem. 



tions and eat with un wash en hands, but to perforin 
those acts of purity and beneficence which were so 
beautifully shewn forth in the society over which he 
presided in Palestine, in the Church of Barnabas 
and Dorcas, and of those who had all things in com- 
mon, *^ to visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic- 
" tion, and to keep unspotted from the world." 

He knew well the fatalism which threw the guilt 
of its crimes upon an overruling Providence, and 
the fanaticism which under the name of " faith^' made 
zeal for God the pretext of the most atrocious wicked- 
ness, and desperately trusted in the privilege of being 
God's chosen people as the cloak for every sin, the 
charm against every danger. And therefore he taught 
that " no man could be tempted of God," and that 

the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness 
" of God ;" that the trust and faith in God which 
now bore that name with them was something wholly 
different from that trust which had caused their an- 

and ceremonial (cultus exterior) {Op^aKeia) of the Christian religion. 
" The scheme of grace and truth that ' became' through Jesus Christ, 
" the faith that looks down into the law of hberty, has hght for its 
" garment — its very robe is righteousness." (Coleridge's Aids to Re- 
flection, Aph. 23.) 

This is the true meaning of the passage, obscured in our version 
by the obsolete sense of " rehgion," which at the time of the transla- 
tion was used for a " monastic order." For the general sense comp. 
Matt. XXV. 34 ; xv. 10. Ablutions, as they had been part of the ancient 
ceremonial, so, as is well known, they were observed with excessive 
and rigid punctiliousness, not only by the Pharisees, but also by the 
Ebionitish section of the Christian society. Hence the particular 
figure of "pure and undefiled." See Epiph. Haer. 30. 2. 15. 21. 
'Ava/ce^. p. 140 ; Clem. Horn. xi. 26. 1 ; x. 1, but especially xi. 28, 
where there is almost a verbal contrast with this passage, XSlou 



THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. 



297 



cestors to be enrolled among tlie ''just/' and whicli, 
whether in their own first father Abraham, or the one 
divinely sanctioned type of Gentile excellence in Rahab, 
was no wild and licentious fanaticism, but the simple 
performance of acts of self denial and love, such as 
now were despised and hated \ 

He knew the hollowness and falsehood which per- 
vaded all their social intercourse, the casuistry which 
distinguished between the formal oath and the simple 
afiirmation ^, and between the oath by the temple, and 
the oath by the gold of the temple ; which cared much 
for the honour of teaching, and being called Rabbi, 
Rabbi ^, and cared nothing for its duty and reality. And 
therefore — with an emphasis which would be startling 
did we not remember how in the Gospel which is his 
model we are told that " by our words we are justified 
" and by our words we are condemned," how in the very 
society of which he was the head, a single falsehood was 
believed to have been visited with immediate death ^ — 
he insists on the control of the tongue, and the right 
use of conversation, as one of the heaviest of all re- 
sponsibilities, the most solemn of all religious duties. 
" Be not many masters," " If any offend not in word 
" he is a perfect man," " Above all, swear not at all™;" 
such are the traces of the teaching of his Divine 
master, preserved almost verbally in this Epistle ; 
whilst in the injunctions " Is any afflicted, let him 
" pray ; Is any merry, let him sing psalms we 
see the sanie spirit of blending together the com- 



^ James i. 13, 20 ; ii. 14—26. 
k Matt, xxiii. 7. 

James iii. 1, 2 ; v. 12. 



' Matt. V. 33 ; xxiii. 16. 
1 Matt. xii. 37 ; Acts v. 1. 

n James v. 13. 



298 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



mon acts and words of daily life with, tlie heavenly 
and the spiritual, as was exhibited in outward form 
in that primitive Church at Jerusalem °, of which we 
read that its members, breaking the bread/' (for 
so surely we must understand the sacred narrative,) 
" breaking the bread" of the Holy Communion " from 
" house to house," did there, in the common inter- 
course of family life, eat their food with gladness and 
" singleness of heart." 

Lastly, he was addressing a body of readers, not like 
the Greek communities of St. Paul's Churches, thinly 
settled in an impoverished country, and therefore with 
* no strong demarcation of ranks except that of the free 
citizens and household slaves, but vast masses of a great 
nation, — even in this its last decline, exhibiting traces 
both of its ancient wealth, and of that activity and faci- 
lity in the acquisition of wealth which have so remark- 
ably distinguished it in more recent times, — inhabit- 
ing both in Palestine and out of it?, some of the most 
thickly peopled regions to be found in the then known 
world, and impressed with the same broad distinction 
between rich and poor, which had so strongly marked 
it in the flourishing ages of the Jewish monarch3\ 
Such was the state of things, with the haughty aristo- 
cratical insolence engendered by it amongst the higher 
clases, to which Isaiah and Jeremiah had addressed 
themselves of old^, — which had not escaped the rebukes 
of Him who declared woe on those who devoured 
" widows' houses^" — which the early Church of Jeru- 

° Acts ii. 46. p Such as Babylonia (Milman, ii. 186) and 

GaUlee, (ii. 262 ; Joseph. Vit. U5 ; B. J. ii. Ill, 112.) 

i See Isa. v. 8 ; Jer. v. 5. Matt, xxiii. 14. 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



299 



salem had endeavoured at once to check and to remedy 
by its common property ^ and its frequent contributions 
for the wants of the poor in Judsea, — and against 
which now for the last time was lifted up the warning 
voice of James the Just. 

He saw the oppression which trampled on the poor, 
and the meanness which truckled to the rich, although 
amongst the poor* were "the heirs of the kingdom 
" which God hath promised to them that love Him," 
and amongst the rich were those who " blasphemed the 
" worthy name by which Christ's people were called." 
He heard the cry of the labourers", who were defrauded 
of their hire, on the one side, and he heard on the 
other the sound of feasting and wantonness^, and the 
words of careless luxury aud selfishness which said, 
even under the shadow of impending destruction, 
" To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city 
" and continue there, and buy and sell and get gain." 
He saw and heard all this, and his spirit burned 
within him, and breaking through all the forms of the 
apostolic Epistle, we hear, with a shock of surprise, 
the terrific denunciation of the ancient prophet y, deli- 
vered with all the impassioned energy of an Amos or 

3 Acts ii. 45 ; iv. 34 ; Gal. ii. 10 ; Acts xi, 30 ; xxiv. 17 ; 1 Cor. 
xvi. 1 ; 2 Cor. viii. 4 ; Eom. xv. 27. 

t James ii. 1 — 9. The "poor men." {ol irTdoxoi) was in fa6t almost 
the recognised appellation of the Christians of Palestine, whether 
from the real poverty of their circumstances, (comp. Acts ii. 45 ; iv. 
34,) or from the stress which they laid upon it as a voluntary virtue. 
See Eom. xv. 26 ; Gal. ii. 10 ; and compare the later name of Ebionite, 
originating from this very circumstance, (Neander, Hist, of Church, 
ii. 10.) 

^ James v. 4. ^ Ibid. v. 5; iv. 13. r Ibid. v. 1. 



300 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



[seem. 



a Joel, Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl for the 
"miseries that shall come upon you," — and then, as 
if its work was over, dying gradually away into the 
softer Christian strain, which bids even the oppressed 
and suffering poor take comfort in the surer consola- 
tion that " the Lord was at hand and t9 turn to the 
records of the older dispensation, not only for awful 
warnings against their enemies, but for the more en- 
during instruction which they hold out in "examples 
of suffering, affliction, and patience." 

3. Such is the peculiar character of the Epistle of 
St. James. Standing as it does in the foreground of 
the apostolical writings, it is to them what in the Gospel 
narrative the teaching of the Baptist is to the teaching 
of Christ. Its voice indeed is the voice of the new 
dispensation, but its outward form and figure belongs 
almost entirely to the older. It is the lake which lies 
midway on the mountain-side ; which has received the 
torrents through a thousand channels from the ancient 
heights above, but is not yet divided into the mighty 
waters which are to fertilize the world below. It is 
the outline which is to be filled up, the foundation 
which is to be built upon, the materials which are to 
be worked, by the hands of the later Apostles. It is 
not opposed to the teaching of St. Paul and St. John, 
but it is St. Paul and St. John on a lower stage ; like 
St. Paul, he opposes a religion of ceremonies, but he 
opposes it not by the assertion of faith, but of morality ^ ; 
like St. John, he speaks of love, but it is as the royal 
law^ not as the divine life of man. 



^ James y. 7 — 11. 

b Ibid. ii. 8. 



- Ibid. ii. 17. 



THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. 



301 



Still less is it, as some have imagined, a correction 
of St. Paul ^, It would surely be against the whole 

« For the whole view here and in the earlier part of the Sermon 
taken of the relation of the statement of St. James to that of St. 
Paul, see Neander's Hist, of the Planting of Christianity, p. 295 ; 
Schneckenbm-ger's Commentary on St. James, app. 2 ; Thiersch's 
Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament Writings, p. 257 — 269 ; 
Archdeacon Hare's Victory of Faith, p. 32. It is there maintained 
with the same arguments as are used here, that the faith spoken of 
in James ii. 15 is a perversion not of Christian but of Jewish faith, 
corresponding in modern times not to the Evangelical perversion of 
grace, but to the ecclesiastical perversion of creeds. This false faith 
or fanaticism, being identical with that described in Matt, xxiii. 15, 
Eom. ii. 17 — 29, shewed itself in two forms, (1.) a desperate trust in 
their privileges as the people of God, Uke the Mahometan belief that 
death in battle for the faithful is a passport to heaven. Compare for 
earlier instances Jer. vii. 4 ; 2 Mace. xii. 43 — 45 ; Ecclus. vii. 4, and 
for its worst and latest excess, the fatahsm described in James i. 13 ; 
Jos. Ant. xiii. 5. 9, and the last days of the final siege of Jerusalem ; 
(2.) a trust in their orthodox beUef in the unity of God, James ii. 19. 
Comp. Eom. ii. 17 ; Justin, c. Tryph. 378 ; Clem. Hom. iii. 3. 7 ; xiii. 
4 ; xii. 23. 

Of course the great objection to this view, which to many perhaps 
will appear insuperable, is the apparently designed antithesis between 
the expressions of St. James and those of St. Paul. But, if we can 
suppose that the words "faith," "works," "justification," were, as 
is most probable, not invented by St. Paul, but taken by him from the 
ordinary Jewish phraseology, and invested with a higher Christian 
meaning, as the parallel case of Adyos and irX-npco/xa in the writings of 
St. John, the difficulty would be greatly diminished. The selection 
of Abraham and Eahab is sufficiently accounted for by the reason 
given in p. 297, not to mention that the only Pauline passage in 
which they both occur is contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
and there not in juxtaposition, and in no connection whatever with 
the contrast of faith and works. 

After all, the practical difference between this and the common 
explanation is not so great as would at first sight appear. On the 
one hand, even if we suppose that St. James had in view the phraseo- 
logy of St. Paul or St. Paul's followers, we are still compelled by the 
context to conclude that the example of its perversion which he 



302 THE EPISTLE OP ST. JAMES. [sERM. 

order of progress so manifest in tlie revelation of 
Christianity, if we could suppose that the more per- 
fect statement of Christian truth in St. Paul should 
be intended to receive its completion from the less per- 
fect statement in St. James, and, even if this were pos- 
sible, it would be precluded by the very nature of the 
circumstances under which the Epistle was written. 
So far from its readers being likely to have fallen 
into an exaggerated zeal for St. Paul's assertion tbat 
" a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the 
" law,'' it is probable that they had either never heard 
of it at all, or if they had would have rejected it with 
scorn ; and at any rate to have . warned them against 
an excessive or licentious use of it would have been 
like insisting on the dangers of knowledge to a man 
who has not learned to read, or on the dangers of 
liberty to one who has spent his life in slavery. It 
was, as we have seen, a far different teaching which 
they needed and which he gave ; it was not an abuse 
of Christian faith, but of Jewish faith, against which 
they had to be warned ; it was not the Apostle's teach- 
ing of " faith in Jesus Christ," but the Pharisee's 
teaching of faith "that there is one God;" not the 
wild extravagance which said, " Let us continue in 
" sin that grace may abound," but the stiff formalism 

attacks was to be found in the barren faith of the Jew : on the other 
hand, if we adopt the interpretation followed in the text, and thus 
avoid even the appearance of a collision between the two Apostles, 
we may still from the pointed contrast of their expressions derive the 
lesson which seems thus to have been as it were providentially 
brought before us, and remember that, as I have endeavoured to shew 
fmrther on, there is still a sense in which the teaching of St. James 
may at times be used as a useful supplement to that of St. Paul. 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



80^ 



wliicli rested satisfied in its correct belief. His was 
a teaching as a preparation for St. Paul and St. John 
most valuable, but no more tending to contradict or 
supersede them, than the sober warnings of Advent 
can be said to contradict or supersede the glad tidings 
of Christmas Day. 

4. Such is the Epistle which stands before us at the 
opening of the Canon, such the legacy which the Jew- 
ish Church of the first age has been allowed by God's 
Providence to bequeath to after times. It may be that 
there are those amongst us who inwardly complain 
that it neither soars to the heights of divinity, nor de- 
scends to the depths of our common humanity, — who 
in the impatient spirit of the earlier though not the 
later years of Luther^, would fain declare that, com- 
pared with the writings of Paul and John, it is an 
Epistle of straw. Yet, unless we would wilfully run 
counter alike to the reverence of ages and to the 
soundest laws of sacred criticism, we cannot tear it 
from its place in the Word of God ; there it stands, 
to warn or to instruct us, if only we will ask ourselves 
what lessons it was intended to teach us. 

Even if no deeper and more general principle were 
involved, it would be important to remark the peculiar 
energy with which it enforces particular precepts, 
which we are all of us perhaps inclined too much to 
overlook. It is not without its use to have a proof 
that the ordinary rules of familiar intercourse, of 

^ For tlie true account of this, as of so many of the other misrepre- 
sentations of Luther's words, see the Note W. in Archdeacon Hare's 
Mission of the Comforter. 



304 



TFE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



[seem. 



words, of conversations, whicli we are accustomed to 
treat as the mere play and surface of life, were not 
thought beneath the notice of the earliest address to 
the Christian Church. It may be instructive to see 
that those national and social duties, which we are 
inclined to leave as the undisturbed province of worldly 
politicians, or at least to confine to the older Scriptures, 
have not been thought too secular for a prominent 
place in the New Testament ; and, if the severe de- 
nunciations against the higher orders of society which 
this Epistle contains have been often quoted by wild 
and lawless fanatics, this makes it not the less, but 
the more important to remember that there has been 
a time, when we must acknowledge them to have been 
the words of truth and soberness, spoken not by a fierce 
revolutionist, nor yet by a prophet of the Hebrew 
nation, but by "James, the servant of God and of 
" our Lord Jesus Christ." 

But it is in the more general impression left by the 
whole Epistle that its chief instruction consists. Un- 
doubtedly its one pervading characteristic is that its 
end and object is entirely moral, that the same energy 
of language, the same authoritative tone, which in 
other parts of the New Testament are used to incul- 
cate what we strictly call religious truths, or to excite 
what we strictly call religious feelings, are here used 
to insist upon those plain matters of right and wrong, 
of vice and virtue, which strictly speaking we hardly 
call religious at all. It is indeed not to be forgotten 
that this Epistle is one only out of manj^ St. James 
himself, even if we identify him with the Apostle of 
that name, was yet not one of the Three, whose posi- 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



305 



tion commands an universal interest, and his teaching 
must in like manner be regarded as subordinate to 
theirs. But still the mere fact that it has been ad- 
mitted at all within the range of apostolical doctrine 
is an indisputable proof that there are times and cir- 
cumstances when the simple inculcation of a high and 
pure morality is not only not incompatible with Chris- 
tian teaching, but the best and only mode of impart- 
ing it. 

St. James, as I have said, may be looked upon 
either as the earliest of the Apostles, or as the latest of 
the prophets. He may be looked upon as the espe- 
cial teacher of those who, like the Christian converts 
amongst his readers, are on the very beginning of their 
new life, and in this aspect how great an example to 
those who are or have been concerned with the first 
formation of Christian Churches ! How much might 
have been spared of useless toil and disappointed zeal 
on one hand, how much of unchristian superstition and 
unchristian practices on the other hand, if the first 
missionaries whether of our own forefathers of the 
German forests, or of heathen populations in later 
times, had always remembered that " repentance to- 
*' wards God must precede " faith in Jesus Christ," 
that in the order of the Divine dispensations the moral 
teaching of St. James must go before, or at least accom- 
pany, the religious teaching of St. Paul and St. John ! 
Or again, he may be regarded as the especial teacher 
of those who, like his own Jewish countrymen, have 
fallen step by step into the degenerate formalism of 
the last stages of a corrupted faith. And here again, 
although we need not fear to find any exact parallel 

X 



306 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [sEEiT. 

in modem times to the final crisis of that unfortunate 
race in its ancient home, yet it is too possible for men 
to come in the last days even of the Christian religion 
who shall have the form of godliness without the power, 
who shall speak much of the doctrines of Christianity, 
and care nothing for its duties ; who shall trust, like 
the Jews of St. Jameses time, that oppression, and self- 
ishness, and careless luxury, may be fully compensated 
by the inviolable sanctity of their descent, by their 
strict adherence to the letter of the ceremonial law, by 
their correct belief in the creed of their forefathers. 
And, doubtless, wherever such a state of things be 
found, — wherever the faith in Christ which was 
preached by Paul has sunk into a dead and formal 
belief, as in the last age of the J ewish nation was the 
case with the faith in God which had been preached 
by Moses, — there is indeed a sense in which St. James 
may come in to correct the teaching of St. Paul, as 
he came in before to correct the teaching of Moses. 
I need not repeat what I have alreadj^ said of the 
words which the Apostle of the Gentiles used to as- 
sert the great principle of spiritual life and freedom ; 
I need not repeat how those words became after the 
lapse of centuries the symbol of a reviving world, 
how important it is to make them not the text of 
a worn-out controversy, but the very life and soul of 
our inmost being. But still if ever there has been or 
may be a time when they shall come to be used as 
a mere technical formula or party watchword, then 
we may feel thankful to that good Providence w^hich 
has secured us against this ver}^ perversion by the 
counter statement which is always at hand to check 



TEEE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



807 



it, in the words of the Epistle which tell us that " a man 
" is justified by works, and not by faith only.'' St. Paul 
has furnished the rule and standard of our theological 
confessions, but the exceptions may well be e^sipressed 
in the language not less inspired, though less familiar, 
of St. James. 

But it is not only to large masses of men, or in par- 
ticular epochs of the world, that this Epistle has its 
use. How often are we obliged to acknowledge the 
exceeding usefulness of books, which are yet without the 
tone and feeling which we generally expect from re- 
ligious men ! how often have we heard of persons, who, 
having been by circumstances separated from the reli- 
gious world, with hardly ever a religious expression 
on their lips, have yet been so earnestly employed in 
works of honesty, or justice, or benevolence, that we 
cannot but think of them as having been engaged in 
the service of God ! It is in contemplating such cases 
as these that the Epistle of St. James may be most 
useful, both as a warning and an encouragement. It 
teaches us not to condemn at once those whose life and 
teaching is formed on the model which God has been 
pleased to set before us in the life and teaching of 
St. James. It may not be the highest excellence, any 
more than the Epistle of St. James is the most impor- 
tant part of the JNTew Testament ; but at the same time 
it is not on that account to be put under the ban of 
the Christian world, any more than this Epistle was 
rejected from the Sacred Canon. It is not the end, but 
it is the beginning. It is not Christmas, but it is 
Advent. It is not the teaching of any of the three 
great Apostles of the whole Christian world, but it is 



308 



THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 



[sEEir. y. 



the teaching of the chief pillar of the Church of 
Palestine. It is the ground of an honest and good 
conscience which every Christian rite and every Chris- 
tian truth implies ; it is, if rightly and wisely dealt 
with, no mere superstructure of " ha}^ straw, and 
" stubble," which the ^erj trial will sweep away, but 
the very house which He who is the true foundation 
has Himself declared to be built by " w^hosoever both 
" heareth His sayings and doeth them^; and the rains 
descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow^ 
and beat upon that house, and it falls not, for it 
" was founded upon a rock." 



« Matt. vii. 24, 25. 



THE TRADITIONS OF ST. JAMES THE JUST, 
AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 

The account of the martyrdom of St. James the Just, which 
has been so frequently referred to in the previous pages, is 
found in one of those remarkable fragments which have been 
preserved to us by Eusebius, from the lost work of Hege- 
sippus, a Christian of Hebrew origin, (as Eusebius conjec- 
tures, H. E. iv. 22,) who wrote in the reign of the Antonines 
and lived at Rome between the years a.d. 157 — 176. (Hier. 
Vir. 111. 22.) Of the history, of which nothing remains but 
the following narrative, (with the exception of a very few 
and comparatively insignificant fragments,) we know nothing 
beyond the information derived from Eusebius, (H. E. iv. 8,) 
viz., that it consisted of five books, and professed to give an 
account of the preaching of the Apostles, — that its style also, 
as we can ourselves judge from what remains to us, was ex- 
tremely simple, — and that it contained passages or words in 
the Hebrew language, a fact of some importance in deter- 
mining the meaning of some of the chief obscurities in the 
existing fragments, and thus confirming what would appear 
likely on other grounds ^, that the present narrative has not 
come down to us in its original state. 

Two other early accounts remain of the same event : one 
the very brief description of it in Josephus, (Ant. xx. 9, 1,) 
which even if in part interpolated was already in the copies 
of Josephus seen by Origen, (Com. on Matt. p. 234,) the other 

* Such is the conclusion also at which we should natui'ally arrive 
from the variations in the account as we find it in Epiphanius, (Haer. 
78, 13,) who though he does not profess Uke Eusebius to give the words 
of Hegesippus's narrative, has evidently used it as his groundwork. 



3l0 



THE TEADITIONS OF ^AMES THE JtTST, 



in the Clementine Eecognitions, (i. 70,) which describe a scene 
at Jerusalem evidently based on this, but with the difference 
that James, after being thrown fronl the ''steps of the tem- 
^' pie," is not killed, as it was at first thought, but returns to 
life, a variation possibly suggested by the necessity of the 
story of that work, which required that James should out- 
live Peter. 

Between these two nlust be placed the narrative of Hege- 
sippus, less ailthentic than the cotemporary account of tlie 
Jewish historian, but certainly more so than the Clementine 
romance. It is not my intention to go through the various 
arguments which have pointed out the atmosphere of fable 
in which even this the earliest merely human record of apo- 
stolic times has been enveloped. The contradictions of the 
narrative, the direct verbal imitations of Scripture, the con- 
trast of its extravagances and exaggerations with the calm 
majesty of the Canonical Epistle, are sufficiently evident. 
It will be enough to indicate the fragments of truth which it 
contains — more perhaps than have been allowed by some of 
the more severe critics of recent times — and there is at any 
rate an interest in the subject, and even in the abruptness 
and simplicity of the style, which .may fairly invite us to 
consider however cursorily, this last detailed account of the 
Church of Palestine, this earliest specimen of Christian mar- 
tyrology. 

"The^ charge of the Church was undertaken with the 
* ' Apostles by James, the brother of our Lord, who is called 
" by the name of ' Just' by all from the Lord's time till our 
*' own, for there were many of the name of James. Now he 
" was holy from his mother's womb; he drank no wine or 
" strong drink; he eat no animal food; no razor ever went 

^ The passage may be read either in Eus. H, E. ii. 23, or together 
with all the fragments of Hegesippus, and the convenient apparatus of 
annotations collected in Eouth's Relliquiae Sacrae, vol. i. p. 182 — 255. 



AS ITAEEATED BY HEGESIPPTTS. 



311 



upon his head ; he anointed not himself with oil, and used 
not the bath; to him only was it lawful to enter into the 
holy place, for he wore no wool, but only linen; and he 
" only was wont to enter the Temple, and he used to be 
found lying on his knees, and entreating forgiveness for 
" the people, so that his knees became hard like a camel's, 
from his always kneeling in prayer to God, and entreating 
forgiveness for the people. On account therefore of the 
" excess of his righteousness {diKaioa-vvrjv) he was called the 
"Just," and " Oblias," which is in Greek 'bulwark of 
" 'the people,' and 'righteousness,' as the prophets testify 
" concerning him. Some then of the seven sects among the 
" people, who are described by me in my history, asked him 
" ' What is the gate of Jesus?' and he said that He was the 
" Saviour, from which some believed that Jesus is the Christ. 
" But the aforesaid sects did not believe, either in the resur- 
" rection or in one who should come to award to every man 
" according to his deeds, but all who did believe, believed 
" through James. "When many therefore even of the rulers 
" were believing, there was an alarm amongst the Jews, and 
" Scribes, and Pharisees, saying, ' The whole people is in 
" danger of falling into the expectation of Jesus as the 
" Christ.' They came therefore to James, and said, ' We 
" beseech thee, restrain the people, for it has gone astray 
"after Jesus, as though He were the Christ; we beseech 
" thee to persuade all that come to the passover concerning 
" Jesus, for to thee we all give heed, for we and the whole 
" nation bear witness to thee that thou art just and " re- 
" ceivest not the person of men." Do thou therefore per- 
" suade the multitude not to be deceived concerning Jesus, 
" for the whole people and all men give heed to thee. Stand 
" therefore on the pinnacle of the Temple, that thou mayest 
" be visible from above, and that all thy words may be well 
" heard by all the people, for on account of the passover all 
" the tribes with the Gentiles also have come together.' The 



312 



THE TEADITIOKS OF JAMES THE JTJST, 



" aforesaid Scribes and Pharisees therefore placed James on 
" the pinnacle of the Temple, and cried to him and said, ' 0 
Just one, to whom we all ought to give heed, inasmuch as 
" the people is gone astray after Jesus who is crucified, tell 
" us what is the gate of Jesus ?' And he answered with a 
loud voice, * Why ask ye me concerning Jesus the Son of 
Man? He sits in heaven on the right hand of the mighty 
" power, and He also is about to come in the clouds of hea- 
ven.' And many being convinced, and glorifying [Jesus] 
on the testimony of James, and saying, 'Hosanna to the 
Son of David;' then again the same Scribes and Pharisees 
said amongst themselves, ' We have done ill in furnishing 
so great a testimony to Jesus, let us go and cast him down, 
" that they may be struck with fear and so not believe on 
" him.' And they cried, saying, * Oh ! oh ! the Just one too 
is gone astray.' And they fulfilled the prophecy written 
" in Isaiah, 'Let us take away the Just, for he is trouble- 
" some to us, therefore shall they eat the fruit of their deeds.* 
They went up then and threw down the Just one, and said, 
" 'Let us stone James the Just,' and they began to stone 
' him. Eor he had not been killed by the fall, but turning 
' round knelt and said, ' I beseech Thee, Lord God, and Fa- 
' ther, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' But 
' whilst they were thus stoning him, one of the priests of the 
' sons of E,echab the sons of Rechabim, who are mentioned 
' by the prophet Jeremiah, cried, saying, ' Stop, what do ye ? 
* the Just one prays for you;' and one of them, one of the 
' fullers, took the club with which he used to press the 
' clothes, and struck it on the head of the Just one. And 
' so he bore witness, (efiaprvprja-e,) and they buried him on 
' the place by the Temple, and the pillar still remains on 
' the spot by the Temple. He has been a true witness both 
' to Jews and Gentiles that Jesus is the Christ. And ira- 
' mediately Vespasian besieged them." 



AS NARRATED BY HEGESIPPTIS. 



313 



Position of St. James in the Church of Jerusalem. 

1. It will be seen that in the opening of this passage a dis- 
tinction is drawn by Hegesippus between James and the Apo- 
stles generally, whether we interpret /zera with" or " after." 
On that intricate question, for the reasons above stated, it is 
unnecessary here to enter; whether he was or was not iden- 
tical with the son of Alphseus, it is obvious that both in the 
I^ew Testament and the earliest ecclesiastical writers, he is 
described as holding a different position from the apostolic 
body generally, with which this statement of Hegesippus is 
therefore so far in exact accordance. It may, however, be 
worth while to observe, both in itself and as an indication of 
the general antiquity of the narrative, that he is nowhere in 
it called by the name of eTriaKonos, and that the pre-eminence 
assigned to him, as to the Apostles of the 'New Testament 
generally, is evidently attributed to his sanctity of life, rather 
than to any official dignity. At the same time we can well 
understand how in the Church of Palestine, where the exist- 
ing organization of the synagogue would naturally invite such 
an arrangement, he should both here and 'in the Acts and 
Epistles be described as occupying a position far more re- 
sembling that of the later bishop than we can venture to 
ascribe to the ministrations of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. 
John; and we may therefore, in spite of the slight ana- 
chronism and inaccuracy involved in it, be justified in de- 
signating him by the well-known title of Bishop of Jeru- 
salem," which a few generations later was usually accorded 
to him, and which Hegesippus himself unequivocally gives to 
his successor Simeon, at whose death it expired, never again, 
or at least not for many centuries, to be revived " in its ori- 
ginal form. 

<= When the Christians returned from Pella, their Church was called 
by the name of the new city of iElia, and by the time that the sacred 



314 



THE TEAriTIONS OP JAMES THE JUST, 



Sis Austerities. 

2. It is the account of the austerities of James which has 
provoked the chief suspicions of the authenticity of the whole 
narrative, on the ground of the numerous inconsistencies with 
Jewish usages in the very character which is held up as a 
model of Jewish sanctity. It is certainly impossible to re- 
concile the literal meaning of the priestly practices ascribed 
to him in any degree with historical probability ; the Epistle 
to the Hebrews is of itself evidence, if evidence were want- 
ing, of the utter impossibility of such a violation of Jewish 
feeling as that any private individual not of the house of 
Levi could enter into the Holy of Holies, much less that he 
should be the only one who should be so privileged ^. Still 
even in this, as I have endeavoured to shew in the Essay on 
the Traditions of St. John, there may have been a foundation 
of truth, in the sentiment which invested him with a priestly 
sanctity, not of office but of character, and of which the hy- 
perbolical expression has by the later historian been taken for 
reality of fact. Such is evidently the feeling in the Clemen- 
tine Eecognitions, (i. 61,) which sets his living influence as 
it were in rivalry with the dead formalism of Caiaphas, not 
altogether without its counterpart in the solemn character 
with which prophet and king were invested in earlier times, 
amidst the first indications of the decline of the high-priest's 
power. In like manner in the other details, amidst great 
exaggeration of particular circumstances, elements of truth 
may be discovered which it seems fastidious to reject altoge- 
ther. "We may regard the " kneeling till his knees were hard 

as the knees of camels," as an Oriental hyperbole, and his 
" constant prayers in the Temple," as a striking contrast to 

appellation of Jerusalem was again restored to it, the ancient title of 
"bishop" had been exchanged for that of "patriarch," still retained 
by the Greek occupant of the see. 

^ Comp. also the strong feeling expressed in Jos. Ant. xv. 11, 5. 



AS NAEEATET) BY HEGESIPPTJS. 



315 



the attention to social duties inculcated in his Epistle ; but 
still the general fact is in accordance with the practice of 
Anna, " who departed not from the Temple, serving God 
" with prayers and fasting night and day," (Luke ii. 37;) 
and, to a certain extent, of Peter and John, who went up to 
the Temple services, (Acts iii. 1,) and of the disciples at Je- 
rusalem generally, who immediately after the ascension were 
" continually (diaTrdvTos) in the temple," continuing daily 
" with one accord in the temple, blessing and praising God." 
(Luke xxiv. 53 ; Acts ii. 46.) And as the life and teaching 
of James recalls to us that of the ancient prophets, so also 
this residence (if one may so call it) within the precincts of 
the Temple is well illustrated by the practice of J eremiah and 
the prophets cotemporary with him, who are described not 
only as teaching in the Temple courts, (Jer. xxvi. 2 ; xxxvi. 
10, 20,) but as actually living in its chambers or cells. (Jer. 
xxvi. 7 ; XXXV. 2 — 4.) So also his asceticism is for the most 
part strictly Jewish. The abstinence from wine and strong 
drink, and the long hair, is what might be expected if he 
were of the order of Nazarites, (liTumb. vi. 1 — 6,) a fact 
which is expressly asserted of him in the corresponding pas- 
sage of Epiphanius, (Hser. 78, 14,) and is apparently implied 
in the expression of Hegesippus, "holy from his mother's 
*' womb." That such vows, whether perpetual or for a time, 
were common at this time amongst the devout Jews, appears 
not only from the case of the Baptist, who in many respects 
occupied a position so similar to that of James, and of whose 
life almost precisely similar expressions are used, (Luke ii. 
15,) but also from the general practice as implied in the ac- 
count of the Nazarites, whose vow was undertaken to be dis- 
charged by Herod, (Joseph. Ant. xix. 6, 1,) and by St. Paul, 
(Acts xxi. 26,) the latter at the instigation of James himself; 
not to mention the Eechabites, who are mentioned further on 
in this very narrative. Whether therefore, as Neander has 
conjectured, James as the eldest son might have been de- 



316 THE TEADITIOXS OF JAITES THE JTJST, 

voted to this order like Samuel, Samson, and the Baptist, 
from his birth, or whether he entered upon it after he became 
known, it would equally accord both with his general cha- 
racter and with the details here given. The other traits are 
more questionable. But the abstinence from the luxury of 
oil is a custom of the Essenes, the account of whose life in 
other respects so much reminds us of St. James, (see Joseph. 
B. J. viii. 2, 3,) and the abstinence from animal food, though 
it would hardly have been practised literally by any Jew who 
partook of the paschal lamb, yet in some sense must have 
been the practice of the weaker brethren, i.e., of the Jewish 
■Christians who are described in the Epistle to the Bomans 
(xiv. 2) as eating only herbs. This may indeed have been 
practised only with the view of avoiding the danger to which 
they were constantly exposed in heathen countries, possibly 
even in Palestine itself, of buying in the shambles the re- 
mains of idol sacrifices ; but it is easy to see how it might 
thus become part of the regular type of a devout Jew, and 
thus be fairly represented as the practice not only of J ames, 
but of the Jewish Apostles generally, of Peter, (Clem. Eec. 
xii. 6; Hom. xii. 6; xiv. 1,) of the sons of Zebedee, (Epiph. 
Hger. 78, 14,) and of Matthew, (Clem. P^d. ii. 1.) So again 
the linen garments agree with the practice of ascetic Jews, 
so amply illustrated by commentators on Mark xiv. 51, (where 
the young man with the linen garment" has been some- 
times identified, perhaps however from this passage, with 
James himself,) and would accord with the semi-sacerdotal 
character ascribed to him. The abstinence from the bath, 
unless taken simply as a general expression for an ascetic 
life, is the point most difficult to reconcile, not only with the 
general practice of ablutions in Oriental nations, hallowed 
as it was amongst the Jews by the express command of the 
Law, but also with, the great stress laid on it by the Essenes 
(Jos. B. J. viii. 2, 7, 10) and Ebionites, (Epiph. Haer. 30, 2, 
21.) Possibly however the contrast of the alleged practice 



AS NABRATED BY HEGESIPPT7S. 



317 



of St. James with that of the last-mentioned sect, may furnish 
us with a reason, if not for believing it to be historical, at 
least for the insertion of it by his biographers amidst other 
custonis so indisputably Jewish. According to the statement 
of Epiphanius, the use or disuse of ablutions was the recog- 
nised mark of distinction between the Ebionite sect and the 
Catholic Church, and thus whilst he ascribes to this motive 
the perpetual purifications and washings attributed to St. 
Peter in the Clementines, (Haer. 30, 15, 21,) he regards the 
well-known story of St. John's visit to the bath where he en- 
countered Cerinthus (or, as it is there represented, Ebion) as 
a solitary and almost miraculous exception to the Apostle's 
usual rule, providentially brought about for the purpose of 
disclaiming intercourse with the heresiarch, (Hser. 30, 25.) 
If such a feeling existed in the apostolic age, then the alleged 
practice of St. James might fairly be taken as an outward re- 
presentation of the same inward truth, which, as has been 
observed in the Sermon, is strongly brought out in his Epi- 
stle, (i. 21.) If on the other hand it was only the growth of 
later times, it would at least be important as indicating a dis- 
tinction which has been sometimes denied between the Ebion- 
ites and Hegesippus himself. 

One circumstance further deserves to Be mentioned in this 
narrative, though perhaps it is merely accidental, namely, 
that the celibacy of St. James, so strongly insisted upon by 
Epiphanius e (Haer. 78, 14) and later writers, is here omitted. 
It is possible of course that in this as in other points his life 
may have resembled that portion of ascetic Jews which as we 
learn from Josephus (Ant. ii. 8, 2) abstained from marriage, 
or that there had already begun in the Palestine Church that 
high admiration for the single state which soon overspread 
the whole Church. But if so, it is a fact extremely difficult 

« Another trait added by Epiphanius is his walking barefoot. For 
this compare Josephus, B. J. ii. 15. 



318 THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, 

to reconcile with the implication of the Apostle Paul, not 
merely that the ''brethren of the Lord and Cephas" were 
married, but that they were held up as apostolical examples 
on that very account, (1 Cor. ix. 5.) That Jude, the brother 
of James, was so we know from the appearance of his grand- 
children in the reign of Domitian, (Eus. H. E. iii. 20 ;) and, 
although the expression need not of itself include all the 
brothers, yet, when we remember that they were only four ^ 
in number, one could hardly expect that it should have ex- 
cluded exactly the one who was most eminent and most 
likely to be selected as the type of the whole family. And 
therefore the discrepancy of Hegesippus with later writers is 
so far worthy of notice, as it brings his statement into nearer 
conformity with the most authentic declaration which we 
possess on the subject. 

The Names of St. James. 

3. The next point to be observed in the narrative is the 
statement of the names of James. This is one of the pas- 
sages which makes it probable that we have here a Greek 
translation of a sentence, originally Hebrew or Syriac. "He 
" was called Just (AiWos) and Oblias, which is, in Greek, bul- 
" wark of the people and justice," {BiKawa-vvr],) where it is 
obvious that the sense requires in the first clause of the state- 
ment a Hebrew word for "Just," such as "Zadok," which 
would then, as in the corresponding phrase of Obliam, be 
translated in the next clause by its counterpart in Greek. 
However this may be, the sense is clear that James was 
known by two names, "The Just," and " Oblias," or in the 
Hebrew form " Obliam." 

With regard to the first of these, it would seem from this 
narrative, as well as from the express statement of Epipha- 
nius, (Hcer. 78, 14,) that it had in common parlance super- 

^ Matt. xiii. 55 ; Maak vi. 3. 



AS NAEEATED BY HEGESIPPFS. 



319 



seded his original name. *'He was called so," says Hege- 
sippus, " to distinguish him from the many other individuals 

of the name of Jacob or James," and no less than five times 
in the story he is not called ''James the Just," but simplj^ 
" The Just." Whether it might be the Greek AUaios, the 
Latin Justus," (as in Acts xviii. 7,) or the Hebrew Zadok," 
as in the well-known name of the high-priest of Solomon, and 
the alleged founder of the Sadducees, it was, as has been 
stated in the Sermon, the word especially used in this last 
period of the Jewish nation to express ''those who kept the 
"ordinances of the law blameless." Thus Simon "the Just," 
the high-priest on whose character Jewish tradition dwelt 
with peculiar attachment, (see Ecclus. i. 50,) and whose 
death, like that of James himself, was regarded as the com- 
mencement of the disasters under the Syro-Grecian kings, 
(Milman's Hist, of Jews, ii. 32.) So Zacharias and Elisa- 
beth were both " righteous," (the same word, ^Uaios, Luke i. 
6,) and Simeon "just," (Luke ii. 25;) so Joseph who was 
surnamed "Justus," (Acts i. 23.) Hence probably the true 
origin of the name of " Sadducee," assumed as a name of 
honour by themselves as the real observers of the Law in 
opposition to their rivals the Pharisees. Hence also the ap- 
propriateness of its peculiar use in St. Paul, as vindicating 
for it the higher spiritual meaning which was properly at- 
tached to it, and which was endangered by the more outward 
and ceremonial signification with which this Jewish usage 
had invested it. (Comp. especially Phil. iii. 6, 9.) 

The other name, " Obliam," though of more obscure origin, 
is still not difficult to decypher, especially with the explana- 
tion given of it by Hegesippus himself, which at once leads 
us to the true etymology ^p^^ the "ophel" or "for- 
" tress of the people," a name the more appropriate, from 

^ See Neander's Hist, of the Planting of the Christian Church, 
p. 291. 



320 



THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JTJST, 



its likeness in signification, as has been before observed, to 
the surname of the other great Jewish Apostle, ''Cephas,'* 
and to the image of the "pillar" of the Church, so empha- 
tically g'iven by St. Paul to James himself ; the word " ophel" 
being used for a tower or fortress generally, as in Isa. xxxii. 
14 ; Micah iv. 8 ; 2 Kings v. 24 ; but more especially for the 
eastern projection or ascent (in Latin "clivus") of mount 
Moriah, (2 Chron. xxvii. 3 ; xxxiii. 14 ; Neh. iii. 27 ; xi. 21 ; 
Jos. B. J. vi. 6, 3,) which would thus tend to familiarize the 
expression to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Compare too in 
earlier times the name Eehoboam, (enlarger of the people,) 
Jeroboam, (multiplier of the people,) in all cases perhaps 
names of the attributes of Grod transferred to men. Comp. 
Ex. xxxii. 24. A similar compound seems to have existed 
at the same time in the word " Bala-am, 
'' stroyer of the people," sometimes in its Hebrew, sometimes 
in its Greek form, (Nicolaus,) applied to the false teachers of 
this period (2 Pet. ii. 13; Jude 11 ; Eev. ii. 6.) See Heng- 
stenberg's History of Balaam, pp. 22, 23, and Ewald on 
Eev. ii. 6 \ 

^ As this interpretation of the word Nicolaitans, first suggested I 
believe by Vitringa, has been alluded to more than once, it may be as 
well to answer briefly the arguments which have been brought against 
it. 1. The common story of their origin from the Nicolas of Acts vi. 
5, is one of very gradual growth, (see Neander's Hist, of Church, ii. 
116,) and may well have arisen, like that of the confessedly imaginary 
Ebion, from a misunderstanding of the word. 2. The passage in Eev. 
ii. 15, " So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nico- 
" laitans," which from the ambiguity of the English translation has 
sometimes been supposed to draw a distinction between the teaching 
of the Nicolaitans, and the teaching of Balaam, mentioned in the pre- 
ceding verse, is in fact a strong argument in favour of their identity, 
being the natural close of the charge just brought against the Chm'ch 
of Pergamos in spite of its general excellence. " Thus it is, that even 
" thou, pure as thou art, hast still those who hold this hateful teach- 
" ing," the Greek being here substituted for the Hebrew word, as so 
often elsewhere in the Apocalypse, for the sake of greater emphasis. 



AS IfAEEATED BY HEGESIPPUS. 



S31 



The Death of St. James. 

4. In tlie account of the death of James, as well as that 
of his mode of life, there are many points which awaken con- 
siderable suspicion, both in detail and in the romantic air of 
the whole transaction, and critics have naturally pointed out 
the strong resemblance of the story itself to that of Prex- 
aspes, in Herodotus, and of the speeches of James and of the 
Jews to those in the Gospels and the Acts. Still there is 
enough of general probability in the whole, and we may add 
enough of difficulty in some of the details, to warrant us in 
supposing that we can discover in this earliest scene of eccle- 
siastical history some authentic ground- work of the story of 
the martyrdom of James, The great influence implied in 
the words '' all who believed believed through the means of 
" James," partakes indeed of the general tone of exaggera- 
tion which runs through the language of the Palestine Chris- 
tians respecting him, as though he had been a greater even 
than the Apostles ; and the whole description of the plot 
against him is disfigured by contradictory and inconceivable 
statements. But in the union of Pharisee and Sadducee once 
again against the Christian preacher we recognise the same 
union which had taken place against his Divine Master; and 
especially in the prominence given as it were unconsciously 
to the Sadducees, (for although the Pharisees alone are men- 
tioned, it is obvious from the opinions especially alluded to 
that the Sadducees were the moving power,) we have an un- 
intentional coincidence both with the active part taken by 
them in the first persecutions of the disciples, under the first 
Annas, (Acts iv. 1,6,) and with the express testimony of Jo- 
sephus that it was under the rule of the second Annas also 

' That the persecution of Annas was directed against Christians, 
whether the clause about James himself is received or rejected, is 
well argued in Milman's Hist, of Christianity, vol. i. p. 441. 

Y 



322 



THE TRADITIONS OF JAMES THE JUST, 



a Sadducee, that James was put to death. "Not is there any- 
thing more tumultuary in the stoning of James by the Jewish 
populace than had already taken place in the case of Stephen, 
especially when we reflect how much further the dissolution 
of the nation had advanced since that time, and that here 
again we learn from the account of Josephus that Annas had 
taken advantage of the temporary interval between the two 
Eoman governors to perpetrate the crime. 

So also in descending to particulars there is nothing that 
is absolutely incredible, though much that needs explanation. 
The question ""What is the gate of Jesus?" cannot be un- 
derstood without supposing that the original sentence has 
been in some way altered in reaching its present form, and 
perhaps no more probable interpretation can be given than 
that suggested by Mosheim, that as before the Greek word 
diKatos had been substituted for the Hebrew Zadok, so here 
the Hebrew word "Jeshua," (n^'ltZ?*'.) ''salvation," has been 
preserved in the proper name ''Jesus," when it ought to 
have been translated by the Greek word o-corrjpta ^, and that 
the question, so natural to the falling nation, would then be 
" What is the door or way of salvation?" exactly analogous 
to the questions put to John the Baptist and our Lord, " What 
" shall we do then?" "What shall I do to inherit eternal 
" life ? " " What shall we do that we may work the works of 
" God ?" A similar explanation seems in part to apply to the 
obscure passage relating to " the priest of the sons of Eechab 
" the son of Rechabim," for here again it would seem as if 
the Hebrew plural "Eechabim" had been retained, when in 
fact it had been already translated in the expression the 

^ This is more obvious in the first passage where the question oc- 
curs, iirvvQdvovTO avTov tIs t] 6vpa rov 'irjcrov, kol €\eye tovtou chai roe 
2wT7jpa, where it would almost seem as if the Greek and Hebrew words 
bad changed places, ' They asked, " What was the gate of salvation," 
{(TwTTjpias,) and he said "that it was Jesus," {'lr}<rovi'.y 



AS N'AEEATED BY HEGESIPPIJS. 



323 



sons of Eechab." "What could be meant by introducing 
on the scene a priest who was also a Rechabite, and there- 
fore not only not of Levitical, but not even of Jewish de- 
scent, is not so easy to explain, but the key to the difficulty, 
as has been already suggested, seems to be contained in the 
parallel passage of Epiphanius, (Hser. 78, 14,) where he as- 
cribes the words of the Rechabite to Symeon, and, if so, 
whether we understand by Simeon, the brother or cousin of 
James, it is natural to suppose that he, like his kinsman, was 
classed amongst the order of IS'azarites, and so regarded as 
having at once a priestly sanctity though not after the cere- 
monial law, and as being identical in spirit with the Eecha- 
bites of J eremiah, though not lineally descended from them. 
The scene of the event, though strange, has more to attract 
than to repel belief. If we imagine the people ^ assembled 
in the front court of the Temple, and James standing on some 
elevated terrace or battlement to address them, nothing can 
be more natural than that the priests in their indignation 
should drag him to the verge of the precipice of Mount 
Moriah, on which the Temple stood, and, in their fear of 

^ It is worth while to observe the oonstant use of "^the people," 
(6 K&os,) for the chosen people > as in the New Testament every where, 
and not, as far as appears, in later writers ; so also " all the tribes," 
{iracrai at <pv\ai.) Comp. James i. 1. 

" The word irrepvyiov and its Latin translation (pinnaculum) , as 
applied to a building, is elsewhere used only in Dan. ix. 26, (LXX) ; 
Tertull. adv. Jud. 8 : and in the accounts of the Temptation, Matt, 
iv. 5 ; Luke iv. 9 ; from which it was probably borrowed here : and it 
would be enough for the general truth of the narrative to suppose any 
of the elevations in or about the Temple buildings ; " at the top of the 
steps," (pro summis gradibus,) is the spot given in the Clementine 
Eecognitions, (i. 70.) But even if it were the impvyiov itself, the 
word seems to mean not so much "pinnacle" as "front," (fastigium,) 
and the royal cloister which formed part of the great front is also ex- 
pressly said to have overhung the steepest part of the precipice. (Jos. 
Ant. XV. 11, 5.) See Scbleusner in voce irrepvykov. 



324 



THE lEADITIOXS OF JAilES THE JTST, 



polluting the sacred precincts with, blood, cast him down 
from thence into the gorge beneath, and that on or near the 

spot where he so fell, not within the walls, (as has been 
sometimes erroneously inferred from this passage,) but amongst 
the rocks of the valley of Jehoshaphat, to this day so thickly 
set with Sepulchres, the very " street of tombs" to Jerusalem, 
the memorial of his death should have been erected, and there 
remembered and preserved till the time of Hadrian. The 
cavern still shewn as ''the Tomb of St. James" derives its" 
traditional name not from being supposed to be his sepulchre, 
but fi^om a legend of his concealing himself there, and it is 
curious that amidst the many localities at Jerusalem which 
profess to be connected with Apostolical times, there is none 
which lays any claim to connexion with this — almost the 
only local tradition which can be traced as far back as the 
second century. The undoubted tombs however amongst 
which it is situated, and which are immediately opposite 
the Temple, illustrate the possibility of what is here sug- 
gested, — whether or not we agree with a recent suggestion, 
that the monument which bears the name of Zacharias refers 
to the son of Earuch °, who in the Jewish war was thrown over 
the walls of the Temple into the valley beneath, in a manner 
reminding us of the death of James himself. 

The date of the death of James is fixed by the account of 
Josephus to A.n. 63 ; and that it happened some years before 
the siege of Jerusalem is the natural inference from Heb. 

^ Eobinson's Palestine, i. 518. Jerome (De Yir. 111. 4,) seems to have 
known of this tradition and disbelieved it. It may be obseryed that 
if the spring En-rogel (interpreted in the Targum to mean the spring 
of the fullers) is the same as the fountain of Siloam which is usually 
identified with it, or according to Eobinson, that at a httle greater 
distance, the well of Job or Joab, it would agree with the circumstance 
that the slayer was ets twv yva(p4wv, " one of the fullers," as if speak- 
ing of a class of men either well-known or likely to be close at hand. 

« Joseph. B. J. iv. 5. See Williams' Holy City, i. 173, (2nd edition). 



AS ^TAKKATED BY HEGESIPPFS. 



325 



xiii. 7. Nor in fact is there any reason for pressing the 
words of Hegesippns to mean that the siege followed upon 
it in the very next year ; it is evident that here, as in the 
alleged passage of Josephus quoted by Origen, Comm. in 
Matt. 324; Eus. H. E. ii. 22, the whole stress is laid on 
the fact that the calamities of the city were a judgment for 
the death of the Just one ; whether a few years sooner or 
later, could be of no great moment either to the Jewish or 
the Christian historian of the event. 



SERMON VI. 

SUPPLEMENT TO SERMON III. 



Heb. i. 1, 2. 

God, who at sundet times and in diyees manners spake m 

TIME PAST TTNTO THE FATHERS BY THE PROPHETS, HATH IN 
THESE LAST DAYS SPOKEN UNTO US BY HiS SoN, WHOM He 
HATH MADE THE HEIR OF ALL THINGS. 

When first I opened this course of Sermons on the 
chief characters of the Apostolical age, it was also my 
hope to describe on such ^ occasions as would not in- 
terfere with the more general argument, the subordi- 
nate influences which, though of less moment than those 
that are involved in the characters of the three great 
Apostles, are yet necessary to complete the full pic- 
ture ; namely, the purely J ewish element of the Church 
of Palestine, and the mixed element of the Hellenistic 
Jews; closing it may possibly be at some future time 
with the great catastrophe which cut short the influence 
of both in the capture of Jerusalem by Titus. Of these 
the first was discussed in an analysis of the character 
and Epistle of St. James, and now I trust that I may 
be allowed on this day, so especially connected with 
the name of St. Paul, to dwell on that peculiar portion 
» Preached on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. 



SEEM, yi.] 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 



327 



of his teaching whicli is preserved to us in the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, and which has alwaj^s been regarded 
as exhibiting, more or less distinctly, the influences 
shared by the Apostolical age in common with the 
Church of Alexandria. 

It is needless to observe that the Jewish race at 
the time of the Christian era was commonly divided 
into the purely Hebrew^ Jews, whose centre was at 
Jerusalem, and the Grrecian or Hellenistic Jews, whose 
centre was that great city, which bore the name of the 
only conqueror of ancient or modern times who suc- 
ceeded in fusing together the discordant elements of 
the East and "West. There, under the sway of the 
Grrecian Ptolemies, a colony of Jews had grown up 
so important as to be formally enrolled amongst the 
native citizens of the place ^, and to have a separate 
worship of their own ; there was the chief seat of 
the later Jewish literature ; there also was the chief 
school of Christian theology during the four first 
centuries. But, great as must have been the influ- 

^ The word "Hebrew," {^'E^paios,) as is well known, is used in the 
New Testament, and in the earliest ecclesiastical Greek, for those Jews 
who spoke Hebrew, whilst the word "Hellenist," ('EAAtjj'iVttjs,) always 
translated in the authorized version by the word " Grecian" as dis- 
tinct from " Greek," (which is confined to the translation oi^EWriv,) 
is used for those Jews who, hving in the eastern parts of the empire, 
made use of the Greek language, then the medium of communication 
between all civilized nations. See especially Acts vi, 1. If, therefore, 
the title of the Epistle shewed the sense of the word in the New Tes- 
tament, it might be safely concluded that it was intended for the 
Jews of Palestine. But inasmuch as in the writings of Josephus, 
Philo, and the Fathers generally, the word "Efipaws is used as equiva- 
lent to 'louSatos, this argument is more or less precarious. 

<= See Jos. Ant. xiv. 7. 2 ; 10. 1 ; xix. 5, 2 ; B. J. ii. 18. 7. 



328 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. [sEEM. 

eilce of the atmosphere on the outward aspect of the 
Christian Church, even in its earliest times, and long 
as it survived the extinction of the Church of Jeru- 
salem, it seems at first sight to have been passed by in 
the sacred record as if it had never existed. Few 
points bring before us so vividly our imperfect informa- 
tion of the apostolic times as the recollection of what 
we do and do not know of the one representative of 
that great community who appears before us in the 
person of Apollos. There is no one^ whose natural 
gifts are so highly commended in the New Testament, 
as are his eloquence and power when he was first found 
by Aquila and Priscilla at Ephesus ; no one out of the 
Apostolic circle whose name attains so great a pre- 
eminence as his, when it was placed by the Corinthian 
factions on a level with that of Paul, of Cephas, and of 
Christ Himself. But this is all, and what Scripture 
fails to tell us, tradition, contrary to its usual custom, 
does not even attempt to supply ; of him almost alone 
amongst the characters of the New Testament can it 
be said that his name is enrolled^ in no calendar, 
however apocryphal, — his presence attested by no re- 
lics, however disputed. And thus — whereas by the side 
of St. Peter arose St. James, by the side of St. John his 
less illustrious namesake the Ephesian Presbyter, whose 
presence tended to confuse the traditions of the early 
Church respecting the Apostle himself — over the whole 
region which bears his name in the New Testament 
St. Paul reigns alone, and the one character which 

^ See Acts xviii. 24 ; 1 Cor. i. 12. 

« The name of Apollos as a Saint is said nowhere to occur in the 
Acta Sanctorum. 



VI.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBKEWS. 329 

miglit have been placed in competition with him in 
the same sphere has been swept out of it by subsequent 
history as if it had never existed. 

But, whilst Alexandria itself with all that belongs 
to it is thus entirely, and as it were studiously thrown 
into the shade, as if to guard the sacred precincts from 
the slightest intrusion of merely human wisdom, as if 
to impress upon us that the understanding of the pru- 
" dent, and the scribe and disputer of this world " had 
indeed no place amongst the Apostles and Evangelists 
of Christ ; yet still, as there is a true union of philo- 
sophy and faith, which Christianity does not refuse to 
recognise, so there was a true union of divine and hu- 
man learning even then, of which one phase at least is 
perpetuated in the New Testament. What there was 
in it purely outward and transitory has for the most 
part passed away with the theologians of Alexandria, 
who have preserved to us only its exaggerated and dis- 
torted likeness; what was compatible with the divine 
simplicity of Apostolical faith, may for the most part 
be found where the Church has always sought and 
recognised it, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. And if 
the conjecture of Luther be admitted, then by a sin- 
gular coincidence, this great but anonymous Epistle 
had for its author the great but obscure Apollos, and 
the mystery which shrouded the fortunes of Apollos 
may have arisen from the same cause which shrouded 
the authorship of the Epistle. 

I. It is not indeed strictly necessary, in considering 
the object and occasion of this Epistle, to enter on the 
question of its origin. If the Gospels of St. Mark and 



330 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [sEEM. 

St. Luke though not written by Apostles, have yet been 
admitted into the Sacred Yolume, no one need regard the 
canonicity of a book as dependent on its authorship ; if 
once we recognise its place in the circle of Apostolical 
teaching, it has an authority over us which no criticism 
respecting its origin can disturb. And in the case 
before us, quite independently of the question of its 
general authority, it is still less necessary to decide 
positively, inasmuch as whether we believe it to be or 
not to be the writing of Paul himself, the conclusion 
at which we must arrive concerning its end and spirit 
must be substantially the same. If in obedience to 
the doubts suggested by Clement, Irenseus, Hippolytus, 
TertuUian, Cyprian, Caius, Origen, and in a less degree 
by Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, and. Jerome, we 
ascribe the Epistle in its present state not to the Apo- 
stle, but to one of his companions, — whether Luke, or 
Clement, or Barnabas, or Apollos, — we must still ac- 
knowledge that though not of Paul it is Pauline ; that 
without the intervention of Paul it would, humanly 
speaking, never have been composed ; that the thoughts 
and images are too like those of the Epistles to the 
Bomans and Galatians to be merely an accidental coin- 
cidence ; that there is a certain sense in which we may 
thus far, in accordance with the common phraseology, 
regard it as the " Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the 
Hebrews.'' If on the other hand we venture to trust 
in the decision of most of the writers of the Eastern 
Church, and the universal belief which subsequently 
prevailed in the middle ages, and conjecture that it was 
written not only in the spirit but by the hand of Paul, 
— yet still the indications which Providence has left to 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 



331 



guide us on its very front by the marked difference of 
form, style, and language, from the other Epistles which 
expressly claim to be by the Apostle himself, and by its 
confessed approximation in all these points to the Alex- 
andrian school, must compel us to conclude that if 
St. Paul himself be the author he has assumed for the 
time a new character ; he has dropped the commanding 
tone of the Apostle of the Gentiles which marks the thir- 
teen previous Epistles ; he has become ^ (to use his own 
phrase) " a Jew to the Jews ; he. has ^' for their sakes ° 
" transferred in a figure the things of Apollos to him- 
" self ; " he appears before us, not as heretofore, with 
independent authority, " neither by men nor through 
" men," but " as ^ having had the word confirmed to 
" him by those that first heard it;" not with signs ^ 
and wonders and mighty deeds," but as " an eloquent 
man^, and mighty in the Scriptures, mightily con- 
vincing the Jews, and shewing out of the Scriptures 
that J esus is the Christ." 

Whether in short we believe that "Paul planted 
" and Apollos wateredV' or whether we prefer to think 
that Paul both planted and watered, suffice ib to know 
that in either case it is " God that gave the increase :" 
whether we lean to the decision of the Western or the 
Eastern Church, we cannot go wrong if we acquiesce 
in the judgment of the profoundest of all the ancient 
Fathers, that amidst the conflicting theories on the 
subject '^the real author is known to God alone"'." 

f 1 Cor. ix. 20. ^ 1 Cor. iv. 6. ^ Heb. ii. 3 ; comp. 

Gal. i. 1. '2 Cor. xii. 12 ; comp. Heb. ii. 4. ^ Acts xviii. 

24, 28. 1 1 Cor. iii. 6. 

" " The style of the Epistle to the Hebrews has not the rudeness 
of the language of the Apostle who confessed himself to be rude in 



332 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [sEEM. 

Leaving then this question, let us proceed to examine 
the time, circumstances, and object, of the composition 
of this great Epistle. It was addressed, as its ancient 
and undisputed title tells us, "to the Hebrews;" that 
is, to that portion of the Jewish nation which spoke 
the Hebrew tongue, the aristocracy, if I may so speak, 
of the whole race, undefiled by any contamination of 
Grecian custom or language. Palestine, to a true Is- 
raelite, whether Hebrew or Hellenist, must still have 
been the home to which his national feelings turned. 
Jerusalem, to a Jewish Christian, even though he wrote 
from imprisonment in a distant country, would, espe- 
cially in this its impending crisis, command the first 
claim on his " word of exhortation^." It is still there- 
fore the Church of St. James which we see before us, 
but with times and circumstances far different, — St. 
James himself already, it would seem, numbered with 
the departed*', "the end of whose conversation" the 
Hebrews were to consider with grateful remembrance ; 

" speech, tliat is, in diction : but the Epistle is more purely Greek in 
*' its composition, as would be confessed by every one who is any judge 
" of the difference of styles. On the other hand, that the thoughts 
*' of the Epistle are wonderful, and not inferior to the acknowledged 
" writings of the Apostle, would be agreed upon by every one who has 
" paid any attention to the reading of the Apostle. My own judgment 
" then is that the thoughts are the Apostle's, but the language and 
" the composition of some one who noted down the Apostle's views, 
" (t^ airoa-ToMKa,) and as it were commented as a schoUast on what 
" had been said by his master. If then any Church hold to this 
" Epistle as Paul's, let it have the credit of so doing, for it was not 
" without reason that the ancients have left it as Paul's. But as to 
" who wrote the Epistle, the truth is known to God." (Origen, ap. 
Eus. H. E. vi. 25.) 

" Heb. xiii. 22. <> Heb. xiii. 7. This assumes that the date 

of James's death in Josephus, a.d. 63, is correct. 



YI.] 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 



333 



the calamities which, then only threatened them from 
a distance were now near at hand ; the bonds of their 
communion were to be drawn closer and closer, "so 
" much the more as they saw the day approaching p 
the trial of trials, which year after year had been de- 
layed, was now brought inevitably before them — the 
dreadful necessity of choosing once for all between 
those ancient institutions, in which up to this time 
even Apostles had not refused to join, and that eternal 
polity which could alone endure the convulsion which 
was " to shake not the earth only but also " heaven 

The teaching of St. Paul, from the First Epistle to 
Thessalonica down to the latest Epistle to Timothy, 
had for these wants no especial meaning ; the contro- 
versy of Jew with Gentile was either set at rest for 
ever, or at least had no concern for them ; the purely 
spiritual teaching of St. John could not fully come 
into the world until after the dissolution of that older 
frame-work of the earlier period of the Apostolic age 
under which they still sheltered themselves. It was a 
link between the two which they needed, — a teaching 
which, whilst it entered into their national feelings 
with a sympathy beyond what could have been possible 
during the vehemence of the original contest with 
Judaism, should yet through those feelings prepare 
them for the full appreciation of those spiritual truths, 
which St. Paul himself had indeed urged in his writings, 
but in the midst of arguments on other topics. It was 
no native prophet of Palestine, dwelling within the 
sphere of their own narrower view, to whom the suf- 
fering Hebrews can have looked for a solution of their 
p Heb. X. 25. i Heb. xii. 26. 



334 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 



[seem. 



doubts ; here, if ever, was the time for the introduction 
of a higher wisdom, a profounder knowledge, such as 
might well be supposed to exist amongst their foreign 
countrymen, analogous, it may be, to the gifts which 
had been partially communicated from contact with 
Greek philosophy, but elevated above them by the 
purifying and strengthening influence of Apostolical 
faith and love. Such was the consolation which they 
needed, and it came. It came, bearing in its very form 
the mark of that transitional period to which it be- 
longed, — when, after the subsiding of the personal con- 
tests of St. Paul with his antagonists, it ceased to be 
regarded from whom, but only to whom and for what 
object Apostolical instructions were sent ; when, as in 
the contrast of old between the acts and speeches of 
the earlier Prophets and the books ^' of the later, so 
here tbe living Epistle of the first period of Christian 
history was gradually fading off into the systematic 
and general treatise, headed by no personal greeting, 
closed by no autograph salutation. As in form, so 
also in style, it bespoke at once its peculiar character : 
language equally classical may be found in parts of 
St. Luke ; appeals to their national history and tradi- 
tion equally emphatic in the speech of the Hellenist 
Stephen ; interpretations of the Old Testament equally 
spiritual in the Epistles to Corinth and Galatia ; adop- 
tion of terms equally philosophical in the writings of 
St. John ; but there is no other part of the New Testa- 
ment where all these Hellenistic elements are brought 
so strongly forward. There they are occasional and 
accidental, — here they are perpetual and essential ; the 
' See Ewald on the Prophets, i. 40 ; ii. 208, 392, 542. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 



335 



rhetorical flow, the sustained argument, the polished 
Greek, the spiritualising interpretations, neither can 
be, nor by an observant reader ever have been over- 
looked, as the predominant marks of this Epistle, how- 
ever we may attempt to account for them. 

And, as the outward aspect, so also are the inward 
contents of the Epistle. It was in true harmony with 
the wants of the time that all the Apostolical writings 
immediately before and after, as well as during this 
period, — those especially, addressed by St. Paul and 
St. John to the Asiatic Churches, — bring out with 
the utmost vividness the One central Object of Chris- 
tian faith in the Person of our Lord, in direct contrast 
to the dissolving forms both of opinions and institu- 
tions with which this particular epoch was beset. But 
the peculiarity of the Epistle to the Hebrews is that in 
it the manifestation of God in Christ is set forth not 
only in its more general aspect, but as the consumma- 
tion (if I may so speak) of the historical course of 
human events, as the satisfaction of the yearnings, the 
realization of the institutions, of the Jewish nation. 

It is necessary once for all to place before our minds 
the feelings of the Hebrew Christians. Their national 
existence was, as I have said, on the eve of destruction ; 
the star of their ancient glory was about to set in blood ; 
their institutions had "decayed and waxed old" and 
were " ready to vanish away ^ but still for this very 
reason there was the fond attachment which clings to 
what all the world beside has abandoned ; there was the 
longing lingering look which a dying nation casts be- 
hind to its earlier life ; there was the despair which 
* Heb. viii. 13. 



336 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 



[seem. 



cherished the more dearly the vestiges of it that still 
remained. The * chariots of angels, even twenty thou- 
sand of angels V amidst which the Law had been de- 
livered Mn the holy place of Sinai/ they might still 
believe to watch unseen around the walls of Jerusalem, 
as when they guarded the prophet of old at Dothan. 
The recollections of Moses and of Joshua^, the pos- 
session of the Law and of the promised rest, still 
seemed to them pledges of the Divine protection. The 
Temple still stood in all its magnificence on Mount 
Moriah ; the priestly ministrations still continued day 
by day according to the exact letter of the Levitical 
law ; the pontificate of Aaron, after the vicissitudes 
of fifteen hundred years, — after the disappearance of 
J udge, and King, and Prophet, through the splendour 
of the monarchy and the oppressions of the captivity, 
— still remained unshaken and unimpaired as when it 
was first ordained amongst the mountains of Horeb. 
What wonder if the better spirits of the nation should 
be fascinated by the spell, which rallied even the blood- 
thirsty ruffians of the final siege round the ruins of the 
burning sanctuary, which awakened a glow of patriotic 
enthusiasm in the breast even of the renegade Josephus 
while he described his descent ^ from the house of Levi, 
Mhich invested the high-priesthood ^ even of Caiaphas 
with a character of Divine inspiration ? What was 
there, they might well ask, what was there in the whole 
world beside, which could compensate to them for the 
loss of recollections so august, of institutions so sacred ? 

' As inferred from Heb. i. 3—13. See Ps. Ixviii. 17 ; 2 Kings 
vi. 17. " As inferred from Heb. iii., iv. " Joseph. Vita, 

c. 1. Comp. Contra Apionem, i. 7 ; ii. 21. y John xi. 51. 



VI.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 337 

It was to meet this need that the Epistle to the 
Hebrews was written. And now, if we compare its 
opening words with those of the Gospel of St. John, 
it is the natural result of what has just been said, 
that — whereas in the latter we are carried bej^ond the 
limits of the visible world to that beginning in which 
" the Word was with Grod and the Word was God,'* — 
in the former we are brought down to the close of the 
long series of ages in which, after " having in times 
" past spoken unto the fathers by the prophets, God iu 
"these last days spoke to them by His Son^'' If the 
Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians, were taught to 
look to Him who was "the First-born of every crea- 
" ture, the Head of the Church, the Lord of heaven and 
" earth%" we find that the Hebrew Christians are 
especially reminded that there was One far above all 
their own ministering angels^; One who was to be 
" counted worthy of more glory'* than their great law- 
giver Moses One who was to guide them into a 
deeper rest than even their great deliverer who with 
the same significant name of " Joshua'^ or "Jesus" had 
led them to their earlier rest in Canaan ; that there was 
a true sense in which the glory not only of Aaron, but 
even of the mysterious patriarch king of Salem, was 
transferred to Him who was to be to the whole human 
race "a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec^." 

^ Compare the two passages, as they appear in the Gospel and 
Epistle for Christmas-Day. 

» Eph. i. 20—23 ; Col. i. 15—18 ; Phil. ii. 10. 

^ Heb. i. 3—13. <= Heb. iii. 3. 

^ Heb. iv. 8. Compare too the more than usuaRy frequent use in 
this Epistle of the name of " Jesus" for our Lord. 

e Heb. V. 10 ; vii. 28. • 

Z 



338 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 



[seem. 



Every name, every feeling, every institution, which 
had existed under the older covenant was still to con- 
tinue, but invested with a higher meaning, — a mean- 
ing, new indeed in itself, but yet fulfilling for the first 
time what had before been dimly shadowed forth ; ''the 
first was taken away^" only that the "second might 
"be established." It was indeed no visible hierarchy of 
angelic forms, to which their thoughts were now di- 
rected, but He who was the same always, and " whose 

years could never fail ^ ; " it was no earthly Sabbath 
to which He was to guide them, but the eternal " rest 
" which remains for the people of God ^ ; " no weapons 
of human warfare, like those which won the land of 
Canaan, but the '' word of God, quick and powerful, 
"and sharper than any two-edged sword^;" the Law 
was to be written not on tables of stone but " in their 
" hearts and in their minds ^ ; the Sacrifice was to be 
ofiered up in no earthly sanctuary ^ ; the Priest was to 
minister within the veil, " not in the holy places 
" made with hands, but in heaven itself, now to appear 
" in the presence of God for us°^." But still it was some- 
thing to be told that the past and the future were not 
to be suddenly snapt in sunder, — something to feel that 
the new wine was not rudely to be forced on those 
whose natural feeling would still make them say that 
" the old was better — something to be assured by 
Apostolic teachers that the words, the thoughts, the 
associations with which they had been familiar would 
not perish in the approaching catastrophe, but would 



f Heb. X. 9. e Heb. i. 12. ^ Heb. iv. 9. 

i Heb. iv. 12. ^ Heb. viii. 10 ; x. 16. i Heb. ix. 12. 

• ^ Heb. ix. 24. ° Liike v. 39. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 



839 



endure, as humanly speaking through, the medium of 
this very Epistle they have endured, to become the 
stay and support of thousands in every age and country, 
to whom the difficulties, the sentiments, the very ex- 
istence of the original Hebrew Christians would be 
utterly unknown and unintelligible. Yet, gradual as 
this preparation was, tenderly as they were accustomed 
by " the milk ° of babes" to receive " the strong meat 
" which belongeth to them that are of full age," it still 
remained to touch some faculty or feeling in their own 
hearts which should respond to this higher strain, 
which should raise them from "the first principles 
of the doctrine of Christ to go on unto perfection p,^* 
which should prevent them when in sight of "so 
" great salvation^" from sinking back into the wretched 
state of the apostate nation, "rejected and nigh unto 
"cursing, whose end was to be burned^'." That feel- 
ing was "Faith," the same "Faith" which had been 
so triumphantly brought forward by the great Apostle 
of the Gentiles in his conflict with Judaism, but which 
was now insisted upon not in vehement controversy, 
but in earnest exhortation ; a faith, not condemned 
like mere Jewish faith, as in the Epistle of St. James, 
— not set in distinct opposition to the works of the 
Law, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, — but traced 
back through all its various stages from its most gene- 
ral manifestation by which in its earliest effort the 
Jewish mind had "understood that the worlds were 
"framed by the word of God^," down to its latest 
workings in the heroic struggles of the Maccabean 



° Heb. V. 13, 14. p Heb. vi. 1. q Heb. ii. 2. 

' Heb. vi. 8. • Heb. xi. 2—37. 



340 THE EriSTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [sERM. 

age, "destitute, afflicted, tormented." "With such a 

confidence {vTroaTaaLs:) in things hoped for, with 
"such an evidence of things not seen," they might 
well rise above the visions of outward dominion and 
array of legal ceremonies which hovered before the 
earth-bound senses of their countrymen ; they might 
still have " patient trust * that in a little while he that 

shall come will come and will not tarry they 
might well be assured that although not like their 
fathers in the presence of " the terrible sight of the 

mountain that might be touched and that burned 
" with fire they were even amidst the impending 
ruin of their earthly home, brought within "the city 
"of the living God^, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the 
" innumerable company of angels, the general assembly 
" and Church of the first-born which are written in 
"heaven, and God the Judge of all, and the spirits 
"of just men made perfect, and Jesus the Mediator of 
" the new covenant." 

IL Such is the Epistle to the Hebrews ; the true 
link between St. Paul and St. John, the true prepara- 
tion for the end of the old and the rise of the new dis- 
pensation, the true picture of the Apostolical sympathy 
of a loftier spirit and a larger heart with the wants and 
failings of the weaker brethren of Judea. Like the 
Epistle of St. James, it endeavours to exhibit the new 
covenant not as the destruction, but as the fulfilment 
of the old : only in accordance with the change of times 
and circumstances, it was not now the moral but the 
religious element of the ancient law that the Hebrew 
Christians needed to see developed. Like the Apoca- 

» Heb. X. 37. " Heb. xii. 18. » Heb. xii. 22. 



VI.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. ^41 

lypse, it is written under the impression of approaching 
convulsions, and the prospect of what was in some sense 
the immediate coming of the Lord ; its imagery is in 
many respects the same y, only with the necessary dif- 
ference between the fervid strains of a prophetic vision, 
and the calm reasonings of a didactic treatise. Re- 
sembling however these two books in the readers to 
whom or in the circumstances under which it was 
written, — resembling them in the peculiar light which 
it throws on the local and temporary influences of the 
age, it resembles them no less in the subordination in 
which it stands to that aspect of apostolical Chris- 
tianity which has of itself an universal and eternal 
interest. It is not, nor could we have expected it to 
be, a necessary part of the continuous progress of the 
new revelation ; it fills up an interstice between the 
successive stages of the ascent ; it does not in itself 
command on every side the approaches to the heavenly 
summit. But in saying even thus much, it is obvious 
that there have been, and will be, to the end of the 
world, peculiar times and occasions, when this Epistle 
furnishes us not merely with a true representation of 
Christianity, but with the very representation of it 
which is of all others most needed, — when the loss of 
it from the Sacred Canon could for the time be hardly 
compensated by the possession of all the rest. 

To explain the peculiar bearing of the truths them- 
selves which this Epistle teaches, is beyond my present 
purpose ; I have spoken only of the occasion and the 
mode of its teaching them. In every part of Scripture 

y Comp. especially Heb. iv. 12 ; Eev. i. 16 ; xix. 13 — 15 : Heb. vii., 
viii. ; Eev. i. 13 : Heb. xii. 22 ; Rev. xx. 1. 



S42 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [sEEM. 

there is this two-fold raethod of Divine instruction : 
not the message only, biit the circumstances of its com- 
munication ; not the matter only, but the form^ It is 
to the latter alone that I have wished to confine m^^self, 
as heretofore, so now ; and, althotigh in comparison 
with those who are employed in unfolding and apply- 
ing the truths themselves we may seem to be but as 
hewers of wood and drawers of water in the temple of 
God, 5^et it is surely a useful though an humble task 
to gather such lessons as we can from the time and 
circumstances under which these eternal truths were 
delivered. There have, as we know, been extraordi- 
nary exceptions when the two have been wholly dis- 
joined, as when we are told that God through the voice 
of the dumb ass rebuked the madness of the prophet, 
or that Caiaphas spake by Divine inspiration ^ the 
words which even from Apostles had been hitherto 
withheld. But this is not the usual process ; it is not 
through the unconscious agency of an irrational animal, 
or an apostate priest, but through the living words of 
His own holy Evangelists and Apostles that God has 
caused His will to be known. To learn with what 
object and in what spirit these words were first ut- 
tered, is not all, but it surely is something ; to place 
ourselves at the feet of our inspired instructors, and 
catch, so far as we may, the look, the emphasis, the 
feeling, with which their lessons were accompanied, is 
surely a fitter posture for truly understanding them, 
than if we merely sit afar ofi* and hear the sound of 
their voices as the}^ come to us over the waste of 



* 2 Pet. ii. 16 ; John xi. 51. 



VI.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 343 

many centuries, borne indeed on the wings of a mighty 
rushing wind, but with no visible form on which our 
thoughts or imaginations can repose. 

What then is the lesson which we may learn not from 
the truths which the Epistle to the Hebrews communi- 
cates, but from the outward circumstances, the form and 
manner, in which they were communicated ? 

1. In the first place there is for all who live, like the 
Hebrew Christians, on the point of transition between 
two epochs, a real instruction to be derived from this 
example of the method in which under such circum- 
stances larger and wider views were imparted to those 
who clung to the older state of things. The Epistle to 
the Galatians no doubt furnishes a proof that there 
may be characters, who can only be shaken out of their 
ancient prejudices by having new truths placed before 
them in the most vivid contrast; but the Epistle to 
the Hebrews teaches us no less that there is a stage in 
the process of transition when ancient forms and feel- 
ings must be treated not with stern severity, but with 
tender sympathy ; when the failing heart and flagging 
spirit will be best attracted towards Divine truth not 
by seeing its opposition, but its resemblance, to that 
with which they have been themselves familiar. It 
might, for example, have been asked even then what 
words or institutions could of themselves appear more 
transient and fugitive, than those of ''temple," "sacri- 
" fice," and "priest," to one who knew that in a few 
short years or months the whole Jewish system was to 
perish for ever ? what fanaticism could appear more 
grovelling than that which still regarded with devoted 
reverence what had now become a "den of thieves," 



344 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. [sEEM. 

an erapty "shadow," a "whited sepulchre^?" Yet it 
seemed good that these institutions should be confronted 
by those truths in the Christian Revelation, which have 
ever been regarded not as their antagonists, so much 
as their counterpart and fulfilment : that these feelings 
should be met not by leaving them without an object, 
but by raising them to those true objects which had 
hitherto been known to them only through earthly 
veils ; that there should have been a meeting-point in 
which the old should blend into the new, without any 
violent disruption, the perishable exhibited as the type 
of the eternal, without any unchristian compromise. 

It is a lesson also not only to those who, like the 
author of the Epistle, have to communicate new truths, 
but to those who, like its readers, have to receive them. 
A struggle, indeed, so trying as theirs none are again 
likely in all its extent to experience ; never since have 
the foundations of society seemed to be shaken to their 
base, as in the dissolution of the Jewish commonwealth; 
never since have systems so venerable as the Jewish 
polity and priesthood been seen hastening to their 
graves. Yet still, in a measure, such critical periods 
have occurred, and will be likely to recur, in the history 
of the Christian world. Some such trial was under- 
gone by the Church at the fall of the Roman empire, 
or still more when it lost the social and religious frame- 
work of the Middle Ages ; some such trial for the 
Christian mind and conscience, when the traditional 
and authorized version of the Sacred Scriptures was 
first confronted with the countless variations of the 
original manuscripts, or when the ancient mode of in- 

» Matt. xxi. 13 ; Col. ii. 17 ; Matt, xxiii. 27. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 



345 



terpreting them was first disturbed by the discoveries 
of Copernicus and Galileo. It is in the panics which 
attend on such convulsions as these that this Epistle 
may serve to re-assure us that there is a difierence be- 
tween what is essential and what is accidental. It 
is a pledge to us that those feelings which we most 
cherish and most value will not be lost to us with the 
destruction of those outward objects, on which they 
may now be fastened, but will — it may be we know not 
how — be taken up into a higher sphere, as was the 
Hebrew reverence for the ceremonial of the Temple 
service. It is a pledge that amidst all the variations 
of things outward, local, national, there are truths 
inward, eternal, unchangeable, on which we can always 
fall back, and towards which every such change teaches 
us ever more and more to advance ; — not always " lay- 
" ing again the foundations, but going on unto perfec- 
" tionV' — adding ourselves, if so it may be, to the 
long catalogue of the heroes of faith who have gone 
before us, " God having provided some better thing for 
" our children, that we without them should not be 
" made perfect^." It is a pledge, we may fervently 
trust, that He in whom the Hebrew Christians were 
taught to find the most complete satisfaction to all 
their wants will still be to us as to them, amidst all 
changes inward and outward, a sufficient stay and 
support, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 
" and for ever 

2. It is also the Epistle for sufierers ; for suff'erers of 
whatever kind, whether from the more refined suffering 
of inward perplexity, such as I have just [now noticed, 

b Heb. vi. 1. Heb. xi. 40. ^ Heb. xiii. 8. 



346 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 



[seem. 



or from the actual " reproaches and afflictions such, 
as fell on the Jewish Christians amidst the persecutions 
and calamities which attended them in the downfall of 
their nation. It is there, that those words are written 
for our endless comfort and instruction which are ap- 
pointed to be read, and which have been read again 
and again by the beds of the sick and djdng, to teach 
us how we should ' patiently and with thanksgiving 
* bear our heavenly Father's correction, whensoever by 
' any manner of adversity it should please His gracious 
' goodness to visit us^.' It is there that more fully than 
in any other part of Scripture we have set before us 
the examples of our suffering brethren, who " confessed 
" that they were strangers and pilgrims upon earth s," 
who had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea 
moreover of bonds and imprisonment ; were stoned, 
" were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with 
" the sword, who wandered about in sheep-skins and 
" goat-skins, in deserts and mountains, and caves and 
" dens of the earth, of whom the world was not wor- 
" thy." It is there that with the most especial so- 
lemnity He to whom its whole teaching points is 
brought before us as the Man of Sorrows. What the 
Grospel of St. Luke is to the two earlier Gospels, this is 
to the other Epistles. As it is to St. Luke's Gospel 
that we most chiefly refer for the accounts of His 
tenderness. His sympath}^. His own human sufferings, 
so here we learn the practical application of it to our- 
selves. In the other Epistles we read of the greatness 
of His work of redemption, of His incommunicable 

^ Heb. X, 33. ^ See the Exhortation in the Order for the 

Visitation of the Sick. ^ Heb. xi. 13, 36—38. 



VI.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 347 

union with tlie Father, but it is to this Epistle that we 
turn to learn of Him. " who in the days of His flesh 
" offered up prayers and supplications with strong 
" crying and tears/' " who endured such contradiction 
" of sinners against Himself," who is " touched with 

the feeling of our infirmities, haying been in all 
" points tempted like as we are, yet without sin 

3. Were I preaching before a common congregation, 
it might be needless to proceed, but in this place there 
is yet a further lesson to be furnished by this Epistle, 
in the very structure of its outward form and compo- 
sition. It is here that we have before us the first 
and only Apostolical model of a systematic study and 
systematic application of the older Scriptures. They 
furnish, no doubt, many illustrations and much of the 
style of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John; they furnish 
much of the spirit and almost the whole imagery of 
St. James and the Apocalypse ; but it is here alone 
that they are made the object of a distinct and acknow- 
ledged study. The comparison of the two dispensa- 
tions, which is elsewhere implied and suggested, is here 
alone formally stated; it is from this source that we 
chiefly derive our use of the very names of the " Old 
" and the I^ew Testament V' for the two parts of the 
Sacred Canon ; it is here that we have the earliest ex- 
position of the problem which has so often agitated 
thoughtful minds, * Yetus Testamentum in Novo patet ; 
* Novum Testamentum in Yetere latet/ 

The peculiar character of the Epistle at once ex- 
presses to us its peculiar object. It approaches the 
books of the Old Testament not as from a Hebrew, but 

^ Heb. V. 7 ; xii. 3 ; iv. 15. » Heb. viii. 7 ; x. 14. 



348 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 



[seem. 



as from a Christian, point of view ; it regards them as 
standing in connexion with an institution that is vir- 
tually past and gone, but as still capable themselves 
of a living application ; the subjects of which it treats 
are purelj^ Jewish, and therefore partaking of all the 
practical hopes and fears, the immediate wants, the 
impending calamities of the time ; but its own style is 
the least Jewish of any part of the 'New Testament. 
It looks on as it were from a sphere of its own, with- 
drawn from the actual presence of that which it medi- 
tates, as if that its own meditations might be them- 
selves unbroken. It is as though the turmoil of the Apo- 
stolical age was for a moment suspended, as if on the 
eve of the approaching convulsion we w^ere called aside 
into the stillness of the student's chamber, and bid to 
contemplate in quiet the relations of the earlier and the 
later systems which we had hitherto watched only in 
struggle and conflict. Here alone in the New Testa- 
ment we are allowed to see, if I ma}^ so say, the very 
process and apparatus of composition ; here alone we 
are called upon to dwell on the skilful construction of 
sentences, on the euphonious arrangement of words; 
here alone, whilst the great subject of the Epistle ex- 
23ands before us, we are invited to trace its labour and 
research, to watch the careful comparison of passage 
Avith passage, to see the scroll^ of the Septuagint Yersion 
unfolded as it were before our very eyes, text hy text, 
with scrupulous fidelity; to be present at the reconstruc- 

^ The quotations from the Old Testament in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews can be traced, as is well known, not merely to the LXX ver- 
sion, but to the particular edition of it, preserved to us in the Codex 
Alexandrinus. 



TI.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 349 

tion of the details of the Temple service in the ninth 
chapter, or the summary of Jewish history in the 
eleventh. The practical, energetic, impassioned Epistle 
has given way to the outward form of a regular Trea- 
tise ; the greatness of the Apostolic office has retired for 
a time into the background to make way for the first 
advances of Sacred Criticism. 

Doubtless when we come to consider this aspect of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews in detail, there are (to use 
its own words) " many things to say, hard to be ut- 
" tered ; " things, as in St. PauFs Epistles generally, 
" hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned 

and unstable may wrest to their own destruction V 
But the general lesson which we may derive from it is 
obvious and indisputable. It surely is a great thing to 
us, if we would but feel it to be so, that, amidst all the 
differences which divide the Old from the New Testa- 
ment, we have this undoubted assurance, that it was 
not set aside in the Apostolic age as belonging to a 
perishable and perishing system, but was still even in 
that momentous crisis revered as a source of Divine 
instruction, explored as an unexhausted mine of Divine 
truth; that its expressions of devotion and warning, 
its record of institutions and events, were thought wor- 
thy to rouse the sinking faith of apostolical Christians, 
to engage the deepest research of apostolical teachers. 
Nor in considering the style and manner of this Epistle 
ought we to overlook the feeling of solemn respon- 
sibility which it impresses upon us in our study of the 
Old Testament, — not indulging in fanciful and unre- 
strained speculations concerning it, but making use of 
1 Heb. V. 11 ; 2 Pet. iii. 16. 



350 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 



[sEEir. 



those appointed methods of ascertaining its real mean- 
ing, whicli Providence has afforded to ns, and of which, 
this Epistle gives such remarkable indications ; not 
dwelling on details selected at random from the sacred 
narrative, but viewing it, as in this Epistle, in its 
general bearings, systematically and as a whole; not 
confounding all its various portions together in in- 
discriminate confusion, but comparing, so far as our 
knowledge will allow, the occasions ™ and the context 
of psalm, and history, and prophecy ; the successive 
formation, part by part, of the "great cloud of wit- 
" nesses,^' through all " the sundry times and divers 
manners by which God in past times spoke to the 
" fathers by the prophets." 

And this brings me to yet a further principle which 
is involved in the method of instruction adopted in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. In pointing out the continuity 
of the Divine dispensations, it necessarily confined it- 
self to the relations between Christianity and Judaism, 
because it was of Judaism alone that circumstances 
required it to speak. In using the weapons of argu- 
ment and of learning, it necessarily confined itself to 
the language of the Hellenistic literature, because that 
was the highest form of mental cultivation with which 
the Jewish mind was familiar. But when with the 
added light of eighteen centuries we read the solemn 
words with which the Epistle opens, — is it possible to 
escape the conviction that they have a meaning high 
above the sense which they bore to their ow^n immediate 
readers ? that when we of the western world see, as we 

" Compare for the confirmation of this fact the argument in Mau- 
rice's Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 36— 39. 



VI,] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 351 

cannot but see, in tlie dim aspirations of heathen my- 
thology and philosophy the anticipations of a brighter 
world to come, we may indeed feel that " God, who at 
" sundry times and in divers manners spoke in time 
" past unto our fathers, hath in these latter days/' 
not by an interruption, but by a consummation of His 
previous revelations, however imperfect and partial, 
spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath made the 
heir of all things?" When in its general style we 
trace not merely the unconscious reproduction of Gen- 
tile forms, or the occasional fragments of Gentile learn- 
ing, which I noticed on a former occasion in the 
Epistles to the Corinthians, but the polished Greek,- 
the well-turned periods, the elaborate arguments, with 
which this Epistle alone abounds, may we not turn 
with pleasure to the sanction here given to the philo- 
logical and oratorical, and critical studies, which hu- 
manly speaking we trace to the well-spring of Hellenis- 
tic literature at the University of Alexandria, and may 
we not extend it by a just analogy to those Gentile 
schools of learning which have sprung up in coun- 
tries of which the Hebrews never dreamed, under the 
auspices of a greater than. Alexandrian civilization, of 
which we are the natural inheritors ? When in the 
eleventh chapter of the Epistle we read the record of 
Patriarchal saints, and Israelite heroes, and Maccabean 
patriots, who, although expressly said not to have 
*^ received the promises," are yet held out as examples 
of faith to Christians — is it not allowed us to apply the 
thought to our own historical studies, whether of the 
heroes of the heathen world, whose deeds of imperfect 
virtue have " obtained for them a good report," or still 



352 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [SEEM. YI. 



more of our own Christian ancestors ^ who in a far 
higher sense than those old Hebrew worthies, " have 
" through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- 
" ness, and out of weakness been made strong/^ to feel 
that by the very course of our studies we too are "com- 
passed about with a cloud of witnesses," far greater 
than that which this Epistle sets forth, in proportion 
as our Christian education has opened to us a wider and 
a loftier view, than by any Jewish student was or could 
be enjoyed ? 

May we in this place take this duly to heart, espe- 
cially now at the commencement of our usual studies ° ; 
may we feel all of us, both we who teach and we who 
learn, that if we are not the better and the wiser for 
such pursuits, it is not their fault but ours ; may we 
feel, whenever the Epistle to the Hebrews is read, that 
it is a warrant to us for hoping that our work here, 
however different from that more direct and active con- 
test with evil which is carried on by God's servants 
elsewhere, is yet worthy of a place in His dispensations; 
that we may bear our part, however slight, in rearing 
up an edifice on that " foundation p," of which St. Paul 
was the master builder, in preparing the way for that 
" perfection," which was to close in the teaching of 
St. John. 

" It is hardly necessary to refer to the passage at the close of Arch- 
deacon Hare's Sermons on the Victory of Faith, which forms so natural 
an accompaniment to the study of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. 

° This Sermon was preached on the second day after the opening 
of the Lent Term. 

p 1 Cor. iii. 10, 6 ; Heb. vi. 1. 



ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN 
CHURCH. 

In the Essay on the Judaizers of the Apostolical Age it 
has been attempted to give some account of what we should 
now call ''the heresies" of the apostolic age; in the present 
discussion it is intended to attempt an account of what would 
in like manner be called the ''schisms" or factions of the 
same time — two subjects indeed so closely connected that 
much which has been said of the former has necessarily an- 
ticipated what might be said on the latter, but still suffi- 
ciently distinct to deserve a separp^e consideration ^. 

In tracing the history of the heresies of the apostolical 
age, there was no fear lest any feelings of reverence should 
be shocked by the discussion of men and of principles long 
since consigned by common consent to neglect or obloquy. 
The peculiar curse of faction and party spirit on the other 
hand, is that it calls into its service the highest and purest 
names, and desecrates them in the process ; its essence is not 
that it is evil in itself, but that it worships with an unholy 

* It is hardly necessary to observe that the Greek words from which 
our names of "heresy" and "schism" are derived, are in fact syn- 
onymous. See especially Gal. vi. 20, 21, where the word "heresies," 
(atpeVeis,) is introduced between " seditions" and " envyings," evi- 
dently as a sin of the same character, and still more clearly in 1 Cor. 
xi. 18, 19, where as a reason for his belief that "there were divisions" 
(axio-f^ara) amongst the Corinthians, he gives the fact, "for there 
"must be even heresies (atpeVets) among you." The idea which we 
mean to express by the word "heresy," is in the New Testament re- 
presented by the phrases of " false teachers," " false prophets," " false 
" apostles," and in this (not the Biblical) sense I have ventured to 
adopt it in the Essay on the Judaizers. 

A a 



354 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE COEINTHIAN CHURCH. 

zeal objects in themselves most holy, and it might in this 
case therefore almost seem an ungracious task, to examine 
into the party watchwords of an age, which would naturally 
take them not from the fallible men of common history, but 
from those whose names we can least bear to hear associated 
with local or temporary animosities. There is however the 
less temptation here to enter into detail, because, unlike the 
picture of the ancient ''heresies" which is represented to us 
through the whole course of the apostolical Epistles, we are 
left to form our picture of the ancient '' schisms" from a few 
scattered allusions, — enough indeed to convince us that such 
divisions existed, and to give us the judgment of Scrip tui-e 
concerning them, but not enough either to gratify our 
curiosity, or to offend our natural feelings of devotion by its 
perpetual prominence or recurrence. 

Omitting then all the more doubtful indications of such 
divisions as may exist in the New Testament or out of it, 
I propose to confine myself to those passages in the First 
Epistle to the Corinthians, to which, as forming our chief 
source of information in the Scriptures themselves, I have 
already had occasion more than once to allude, — and to the 
apocryphal work called the Clementines, which forms the 
best comment upon them in subsequent writings, and which 
has also been frequently referred to in the previous pages. 

The Factions of Corinth. 

I. It was natural that the schisms which are incidentally 
noticed in other parts of the I^'ew Testament, (as for example 
in Gal. vi. 20; Rom. xvi. 17,) should have been brought to 
a head in the Church of Corinth. The traveller who has 
stood upon the lofty citadel of the Acro-corinthus, and seen 
the winding shores of the double sea unite in that narrow 
isthmus, will easily conceive how through those free outlets 
to the eastern and western world, the influences of the age 



ON THE DIYISIONS LN" THE COEINTHIAN CHTJECH. 355 



would have passed to and fro to the city which has been 
truly called the "Venice of antiquity. The classical scholar 
who is familiar with the never-dying spirit of faction (o-raais,) 
the proverbial disorder of th.e Grecian commonwealth — the 
ecclesiastical student who recognises the same spirit repro- 
ducing itself in the later controversies of the Greek Church, 
and who in the times immediately succeeding the Apostolic 
age is reminded by the Epistle of Clement to the same Co- 
rinthian congregation, almost of the very phi-ases which, ex- 
pressed the feuds of the old republics, — will not be surprised 
in the one city of Greece which still retained some vestiges 
of political and social activity, to meet with traces of the 
ancient national spirit displaying itself in the new forms 
to which the excitement of the new faith would naturally 
give birth. 

That these factions were not merely chance divisions, but 
that they ranged themselves under distinct party watch- 
words, and that these party watchwords were derived not 
merely from their own local teachers, but from the highest 
and holiest names to which they could attach themselves, is 
clear from the express mention, certainly of three, perhaps of 
four appellations, by which these factions claimed to be known. 
See especially 1 Cor. i. 12 ; " Every one of you saith, I am of 
" Paul ; and I of Apollos ; and I of Cephas ; and I of Christ 

iii. 4, While one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of 
" Apollos; are ye not carnal?" iii. 22, "Whether Paul, or 
" Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things 

present, or things to come ; all are yours." The only pas- 
sage which could throw any doubt on the reality of these 
parties and of their designations, is the expression in 1 Cor. 

iv. 6, " These things have I transferred in a figure (fieracrxr}' 
fidTLo-a) to myself and Apollos for your sakes," as if, (it 

has been sometimes said,) he had used the names of himself 
and Apollos instead of the names of the unknown leaders 
themselves, in order either to avoid mixing himself up in 



356 OK THE DIYISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHIJECH. 

their party disputes, or to impress more forcibly upon them 
the futility of these rival claims, which eyen in himself and 
Apollos would be out of place, much more in those who really 
made them. Eut even if the whole passage (1 Cor. iv. 1 — 7) 
did refer principally to the subordinate teachers in the Co- 
rinthian Church, there still would be nothing in it neces- 
sarily to interfere with the literal meaning of the other pas- 
sages, (1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 22,) which mention the names not 
only of Paul and Apollos, but of Cephas, and which naturally 
imply that, whatever might be the claims or rivalries of par- 
ticular leaders of the respective parties, these were the names 
to which the respective parties and leaders alike appealed. 
Nothing is more natural than that the Apostle in this par- 
ticular passage, instead of speaking of the factions gene- 
rally, especially of the rival faction calling itself by the 
name of Cephas, wished to confine himself to those which 
called themselves after his name and that of Apollos, in order 
to shew that his censure was aimed not against his Judaizing 
opponents merely, but against the factious spirit itself, by 
which those who claimed to be his partisans were no less 
animated than those who claimed to be his enemies. Such 
appears to have been the course adopted also in 1 Cor. i. 13 — 
16, where he immediately selects the party which said, ''I 
am of Paul," as the chief instance of the sin common to 
them all. 

"When from the fact that such parties existed we come to 
consider what they were and in what their differences con- 
sisted, the scanty information which we possess forbids us to 
advance anything with certainty beyond the most general 
statement. That they followed the great division of Jew 
and Gentile which run through all the Churches, of this 
period, and that the adherents of the former ranged them- 
selves under the name of Cephas, and those of the latter 
under Paul, will hardly be doubted; and, if so, it would 
seem probable that it was the party of Paul that were in the 



OK THE DIVISIONS m THE COEINTHIAN CHUECH. 357 

ascendant during the period of the First Epistle, which chiefly 
attacks such sins as would belong to the more Gentile portion 
of the community, and the party of Cephas during the period 
of the Second, which expressly attacks a formidable body of 
Judaizers. And the connexion of these latter with Cephas 
is further confirmed by the appeals which they would seem 
to have made to his example and authority, in the only pas- 
sage where their presence is certainly indicated in the First 
Epistle, (ix. 4,) and in the stress laid by St. Paul on the 
error of Cephas in his address to a similar party in Galatia. 
(Gal. ii. 17.) 

"What might be the relation of the followers of Paul to 
those of Apollos is now perhaps impossible to determine. 
That they were on the whole homogeneous, may be inferred 
both from the connexion of Apollos with the disciples of Paul 
in the Acts, (xviii. 26,) and from the constant union of their 
names in this Epistle, (iii. 4; iv. 6 ; xvi. 12.) The only 
other certain indications furnished to us are those contained 
in the contrast of the expressions "planting" and " water- 
" ing," " laying the foundation," and " building," which 
would, so far as they go, agree with the account in the Acts, 
speaking of the mission of Apollos to Corinth as producing 
a great inapression subsequent to that of Paul. To this, al- 
though less positively, we might add the frequent allusions 
to pretensions to human wisdom and learning in the early 
chapters, (i. 17 — 28; ii. 1 — 6,) which would agree with no 
party so well as with those who professed to follow "the 
"Alexandrian Jew, eloquent, mighty in the Scriptures;" 
whether we suppose them to have been found amongst the 
pure Gentiles or amongst the Hellenistic Jews, to whom 
he seems chiefly to have addressed his arguments. (Acts 
xviii. 28.) 

It may be observed in passing that the real name from 
which Apollos is abridged, as Lucas from Lucanus, Antipas 
from Antipater, js " ApoUonius." Apparently from the cir- 



358 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHUECH. 

cumstance that the first governor of Egypt left there by 
Alexander (Arrian, iii. 5; Curtius, iv. 11,) bore this name, 
the number of Apolloniuses" in Egypt was so great that 
unless some distinguishing epithet is added it is impossible 
to say who they were**." One was Apollonius Ehodius, 
so called from his favourable reception in Rhodes, but really 
(like ApoUos) a native of Alexandria, and successor of Era- 
tosthenes, in the headship of the Alexandrian College or 
Museum. — Another was a soothsayer of this time who pro- 
phesied the death of Caligula (Dio Cass. lix. 29). The most 
celebrated person of the name living in the apostolic age was 
the sophist of Tyana, called from his supposed birth-place 
" Tyan£eus," but who passed part of his life at Alexandria, 
and met Vespasian there. (Philostr. Yit. Apoll. v. 31.) It 
is well known that the life of this man by Philostratus is 
so loaded with fable as to be almost useless for historical 
purposes. 

Whether the words eya> 8e xpiarov, (''And I of Christ") 
refer to any distinct party, must remain doubtful. One would 
gladly, with Chrysostom, so read the passage as if the Apostle, 
after enumerating the other names, had broken off with the 
indignant exclamation, '* But I am of Christ." Had however 
such an antithesis been intended, some such expression as eyco 
be Uavkos XpKTTov ("But I Paul belong to Christ") seems 
almost required to prevent the ambiguity which otherwise 
arises. And that there was some party laying claim to an ex- 
clusive connexion with the One Name which, as the Apostle 
implies in 1 Cor. i. 13, ought to have been regarded as com- 
mon to all, is confirmed by the expression in 2 Cor. x. 7, " If 

any man trust to himself that he is of Christ, let him of him- 
" self think thus again, that as he is Christ's, even so are we 
" Christ's;" and although with less certainty, by the claims, 
apparently, of the same persons to be considered Apostles of 



See Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Classical Biography, p. 239, b. 



ON THE DITISIONS IN THE COEINTHIAN CHITRCH. 359 

Christ,*' and " ministers of Christ," (xi. 10, 23.) "Without 
professing to determine the nature of this party with exa^t 
precision, or to examine the many opinions which have been 
expressed concerning it, the context of the Second Epistle 
where the above passages occur, indicates that, if they refer 
to either of the two leading divisions of the Corinthian 
Church, it is to the Jewish ; and it is in accordance with 
what is implied of Judaizing Christians in other passages, 
that they should have dwelt especially on their national and 
lineal connexion with the Christ," the anointed Messiah," 
*' the Son of David," and that "the outward appearance," the 
" carnal and fleshy" arguments on which they prided them- 
selves, (2 Cor. V. 12 ; x. 2, 3, 7,) should have been their in- 
tercourse either with Christ Himself after the flesh," (as 
seems implied in 2 Cor. v. 16,) or with the original Jewish 
Apostles, who had seen Him, (1 Cor. ix. 1,) or with ''the 

brethren of the Lord," (1 Cor. ix. 5,) especially James, 
who would be prominently put forward as the head of the 
Church of Palestine. (Comp. especially Gal. ii. 16, 20.) Such 
a view, which has been often defended at great length and in 
distinct treatises, is of course nothing more than a conjecture, 
but as the most probable ; and as that which has been in part 
assumed in a previous Essay, it seemed not out of place to 
mention it here. 

27ie Clementines. 

II. From these indications of the primitive factions in the 
Apostolical Epistles, I pass at once over the various traces 
of them more or less doubtful to the remarkable monument 
of them which is preserved to us from a somewhat later 
period in the work published for the first time by Cotelier 
from a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris, under the name of 

the Clementines," which, whether we regard it as a fruit- 
ful storehouse of ancient traditions, or an almost unique ex- 
ample of a work in which the early heretics or sectarians 



360 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE COEINTHIAN CHTJECH. 

speak for themselves, or as the earliest specimen of a reli- 
gious romance, is certainly deserving of more attention than 
has usually been bestowed upon it, even although it be re- 
garded as an accidental memorial of some obscure sect, and 
not as an indication of a more general tendency. 

It may be necessary for the sake of perspicuity to state 
briefly the nature of this work, of which a detailed account 
may be found in the elaborate treatise of Schliemann. The 
" Clementine Homilies," which form the chief part of the 
whole book, and of which eighteen out of twenty remain, 
profess to give the account of the life and conversion of 
Clement of Eome, as recorded by himself. He starts from 
Rome to Palestine in search of the truth, after having vainly 
sought for it in the schools of heathen philosophy; — on his 
way meets with Barnabas at Alexandria, who introduces him 
at Caesarea to Peter, and after witnessing or taking part in 
various dialogues, in which Peter and himself defend the 
unity of God against the Polytheistic errors of Simon Magus 
and Apion, is baptized in one of the cities of Phoenicia, 
which form the scene of the latter part of the book ; and 
the story closes with a discovery and mutual recognition of 
his mother, brothers, and father, who had been separated 
from each other and believed to have been lost. The plot 
is of course subordinate to the conversations, which chiefly 
consist of a representation of Christianity as a perfected form 
of Judaism, in opposition to the absurdities of Pagan and 
Gnostic philosophy, of which Simon Magus appears as the 
representative. To the Homilies are prefixed (I.) an Epistle 
of Peter to James, sending to him a book of his "preaching," 
with a charge not to let it fall into the hands of the Gentiles, 
lest they should corrupt it; (2.) a sohmn adjuration of the 
presbyters by James, that he and they shall comply with 
this request; (3.) an Epistle of Clement to James, in w^hich, 
after announcing Peter's death, he proceeds to describe his 
appointment by Peter to the see of Home, with an accom- 



ON THE DIVISIONS m THE COEINTHIAN CHT7ECH. 361 

panying description of the duty of a bishop, and a charge 
that Clement will send to James "an epitome of Peter's 
" preachings on his travels." This title is affixed to the 
Homilies, and it is therefore clear that the Epistle of Cle- 
ment was meant as a preface to them ; and for the same 
reason, as well as from their position in the MS., it would 
appear, though less certainly, that the two previous docu- 
ments relating to Peter's communication with James are in- 
serted with the same view. 

Besides this work, which is called by the name of " the 
" Clementines," there exist two other treatises more or less 
closely connected with it. (1.) "The Clementine Eecogni- 
" tions," (so called from the mutual discoveries in Clement's 
family before mentioned,) which though originally composed 
in Greek, exist now only in a Latin translation of Rufinus, 
and are, like the Clementines, to be found in Cotelier's 
Patres Apostolici. They consist of ten books, which carry 
on the story to the end, and in the earlier part (i. 54 — 72,) 
contain a very curious description of a controversy between 
the Apostles and High-priest, not to be found in the Homi- 
lies; but otherwise they appear to be abridged from the 
Clementines, and are without the Epistle of Peter or the 
Attestation of James. Their date is fixed by an allusion in 
ix. 27, to the reign of Caracalla, a.d. 212—230. (2.) The 
Clementine Epitome of the Preachings and Journeys of Peter 
including an account of Clement's own death — a compilation 
of very late date, (apparently after a.d. 980,) from both the 
previous works, but in all important points of variation fol- 
lowing the Eecognitions. 

It will be seen from this account, that of these three 
works, the chief historical interest attaches to the original 
treatise of the Clementines. The other two seem to be sub- 
sequent editions of it, in which most of the passages of ques- 
tionable tendency have been either suppressed or altered. 
Its own date is uncertain, but the undoubted indications of 



862 ON THE DITISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHTTECH. 

Ebionite views on the one hand, combined with its artificial 
style on the other, would seem to point to some period about 
the middle of the second century, which would also suit the 
date of the subsequent Recognitions in a.d. 212 — 230. 

Another treatise which perhaps should be mentioned as 
forming part of the same cycle is the Apostolical Constitu- 
tions, a work which professes to be the teaching of the 
twelve Apostles drawn up by Clement, and which, though 
not otherwise exhibiting any close resemblance, has pas- 
sages on ecclesiastical government, coinciding almost ver- 
bally with the Clementine Epistle to James. (Compare Apost. 
Const, iv. 61; vi. 6, 44, 57.) 

Amongst the many points of interest which this book pre- 
sents, there is none so great as that which arises from the 
fact that here alone we have the undoubted language of one 
at least of those factions which are mentioned in the Epi- 
stles to the Corinthians, at a later period indeed, and doubt- 
less with considerable modifications of sentiment, but still 
sufficiently identical to serve as an illustration of the truth 
of the Apostle's representations. Springing as it does from 
a Jewish quarter, it was not likely that the watchwords 
either of Paul or Apollos should have been found in it, and 
as a matter of fact their names are never mentioned. It is, 
as one might expect, the accents pf those who claimed to be 
adherents of Cephas or of James, whose echoes we catch, 
however remotely, in this treatise. 

Of these indications the following are the most remark- 
able. 1. Peter is represented not merely as the Apostle of 
the Circumcision, but as the Apostle of the Gentiles also ; 
all the glory of St. Paul is transferred to him ; no other 
preacher to the Gentiles is acknowledged except him. (Ep. 
Pet. ad Jac. c. 1 ; Hom. ii. 17 ; iii. 59.) For the coincidence 
of this with the language of the earlier Judaizers, compare 
2 Cor. X. 14, 15; Eev. xx. 20; for its contrast with the 
acts of the Apostle himself, compare Gal. ii. 9, 10. 



ON THE DITISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHTJBCH. 363 

2. Although Peter is spoken of as ''the first of the Apo- 
stles," (Ep. Clem, ad Jac. i. 3,) and as appointing Clement to 
the see of Eome, (ibid.,) yet James is described as superior 
in dignity both to him and Clement, (Ep. Pet. ad Jac. 1 ; 
Ep. Clem, ad Jac. 19,) and to all the Apostles, (Rec. i. 66 — 
68;) as *'the Lord and Bishop of the Holy Church, Bishop 

of Bishops, ruling the Churches everywhere, the Bishop, 
the Archbishop;" the Chief Bishop," as opposed to 
Caiaphas the Chief Priest." (Ep. Pet. c. 1 ; Ep. Jac. c. 1 ; 
Rec. i. 66, 68, 70, 72, 73.) For the coincidence of this with 
the extravagant claims of the early Judaizers, compare 2 Cor. 
i. 24 ; xi. 20 ; 2 Cor. xi. 5, (agreeing again with the senti- 
ment ascribed by Irenaeus (Haer. i. 26,) to the Ebionites, 
''Hierosolymam adorant quasi domum Dei.") Eor its con- 
trast with the expressions of the canonical Epistles, compare 
James i. 1 ; 1 Pet. v. 2. 

3. St. Paul is never attacked by name, but the covert in- 
sinuations are indisputable. 

{a.) St. Peter is represented as warning St. James against 

the lawless and foolish teaching of the enemy," (roO e^- 
6pov duBpciTTov,) who perverts "the Gentiles from the lawful 

preaching of Peter," and misrepresents Peter " as though 
** he thought with the Gentiles but did not preach it openly." 
(Ep. Pet. ad Jac. 2.) Comp. Gal. ii. 12, 14. 

(i.) The " enemy" (homo inimicus) appears again as taking 
part in the attack on the life of James, and as receiving letters 
from the high-priest to persecute Christians*' at Damascus. 
(Rec. i. 70.) Comp. Acts ix. 1. 

(e.) St. Peter warns his congregation to beware of *' any 

<= It may be observed here that according to the altered point of 
view from which the Eecognitions are written, the allusions to St. 
Paul are taken not from his later antagonism to Judaism, but from 
his earlier hostility to Christianity ; that he is spoken of not as iden- 
tical with Simon Magus, but as charging the Apostles with being his 
followers. 



364 OIH" THE DIYISIONS IN THE COEIlTTHIAiq- CHUECH. 



Apostle, prophet, or teacher, who does not first compare 
" his preaching with James, and come with witnesses, lest 
the wickedness," which tempted Christ, afterwards, hav- 
^' ing fallen like lightning from heaven," (for the allu- 
sion here comp. Acts xxvi. 13, 14,) should send a herald 
against you, and suborn one who is to sow error {nXdvTjv) 
amongst you, as it suborned this Simon against us, preach- 
ing in the name of our Lord under pretence of the truth." 
(Hom. xi. 35.) Compare again the coincidence with the 
stress laid by the Corinthian Judaizers on commendatory 
letters as marks of Apostleship. 2 Cor. iii. 1 ; x. 12 — 18 ; 
V. 12. 

(d.) The parallel which is suggested in the foregoing pas- 
sage between St. Paul and Simon, is carried out still further 
in other passages, which go so far as actually to describe 
the Apostle under the name of Simon, as the representative 
of all Gentile and Gnostic errors. This insinuation is first 
conveyed in general language, and in connexion with the 
doctrine of pairs or combinations, which is strongly put for- 
ward in this work as a principle of the Divine government. 
St. Peter is introduced as maintaining that as Cain preceded 
Abel, and Ishmael Isaac, so " Simon preceded Peter to the 
" Gentiles, and that Peter then succeeded to him, as light to 
" darkness;" that ''the false Gospel must come first from 
*' some deceiver, {vtto nXdvov nvos,) and then, after the de- 
* ' struction of the holy place, the true Gospel ; were he 
*' known, he would not have been received; but now, not 
being known, [dyvoovfievos,) he has been trusted to; he 
" who does the deeds of those who hate us, has been loved ; 
he who is our enemy, has been received as a friend ; being 
death, he has been longed for as a saviour; being fire, he 
has been regarded as light; being a deceiver, [7r\dvos,) he 
has been listened to as speaking the truth." (Hom. ii. 
17, 18.) 

Much of this might be regarded as merel}^ taken from 



01«- THE DIYISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHUECH. 365 

the necessary opposition between Simon and Peter, from 
our Lord's prophecy in Matt. xxiv. 11, 14, 15, and from 
the account of Simon's universal reception in Acts viii. 10. 
But, when taken in conjunction with the designation of 
the enemy" in the Epistle of Peter to James, c. 2, it can 
hardly be questioned that the whole passage contains allu- 
sions, sometimes verbally exact, to such charges against St. 
Paul as are implied in 2 Cor. vi. 8, 9 ; Acts xxi. 28, or to the 
general success of his mission in parts where the Jewish 
Apostles had not yet penetrated, as implied especially in 
Eom. xvi. 19, 20; 2 Cor. x. 13—16; 1 Cor. i. 13, 15 ; Gal. 
iv. 14 — 16. All doubt, however, is removed by the more pre- 
cise language of another passage in a later part of the work. 
In an argument between Simon and Peter, in which the 
former insists on the superiority of visions as evidence to our 
Lord's discourses, the latter on that of actual intercourse, 
Peter concludes as follows: If then Jesus our Lord (6 
'irjo-ovs rjficou) was seen in a vision and was known by 
" thee and conversed with thee, it was in anger with thee 
as an adversary that He spoke to thee through visions 
and dreams, and even through outward revelations. But 
can any one be made wise to teach through a vision ? If 
thou say est that he can, why then did our Master abide 
" and converse with His disciples not sleeping but awake 
for a whole year? And how shall we believe the very 
fact that He was seen of thee ? And how could He have 
been seen of thee when thou teachest things contrary to 
His teaching ? And if by having been seen and made a 
*' disciple by Him for one hour, thou becamest an Apostle, 
then expound what He has taught, love His Apostles, 
fight not with me who was His companion. For against 
" me the firm rock, the foundation of the Church, even me 
** thou didst ' withstand' openly, {dvdeaTTjKas.) If thou hadst 
** not been an adversary, thou wouldst not have calumniated 
me and reviled my preaching, to deprive me of credit when 



366 ON THE DIYISIONS IN" THE COEINTHIAN CHTJILCH. 

^' I spoke what I had heard myself in intercourse with the 
" Lord, as if I were to be blamed, I whose character is so 
^' great. Or if thou say est that I was to be blamed, {Kare- 
" yvcda^evov,) thou accusest God who revealed Christ to me, 
" and attackest Him who blessed me because of that revela- 
" tion. But since thou wishest truly to work with the truth, 
now learn first from us what we learned from Him, and 
" when thou hast become a disciple of the truth, then be- 
" come a fellow-worker with us." (Hom. xvii. 19.) The 
whole passage is given because it exhibits at length the ob- 
jections made to St. Paul's divine mission, which might have 
been inferred to exist from his own expressions in Gal. i. 1, 
12, 15, 16--20 ; 1 Cor. ix. 1 ; 2 Cor. x. 16 ; xi. 1—5. And 
in the indisputable reference to St. Paul's own words in the 
account of the feud at Antioch, dvreaTTjv Kareypcoa-ixevov, (Gal, 
ii. 11,) which was before glanced at in Ep. Pet. ad Jac. 2, 
there is hardly an attempt to draw over the true object of 
the passage even the thin veil of the character of Simon, 
which serves to darken only, not conceal it ^. 

^ In quoting these passages I have not ventured to question the 
date assigned to them by Schliemann, as forming parts of a treatise 
which it seems difl&cult to place before the middle of the second cen- 
tury. It is a point in our present state of knowledge possibly beyond 
the power of criticism to determine accurately ; and some of the pas- 
sages (those from the Epistle of Clement and from Hom. ii. 17,) may 
be too essentially interwoven with the present text, to be imagined 
ever to have existed separately from it. There is, however, in the 
Epistle to James and in Hom. xi. 35, and xvii. 19, a looseness of con- 
nexion with the context, and also a vigour and conciseness of expres- 
sion unlike the general style of the HomiHes, such as might possibly 
suggest the doubt whether they do not in fact belong to a still earher 
work, which may have been wrought up into its present form of the 
Clementines, as the Clementines themselves have been wrought up 
into the subsequent editions of the Eecognitions and Epitome; or 
whether they might not have been become incorporated from some 
other source, in the same manner as there are evidently passages 



ON THE DIYISIONS IN THE COEINTHIAN CHUECH. 367 



Further indications of the same tendencies might perhaps 
he collected from the same work or from others of the same 
period, but what has been given is sufficient for our purpose. 
It may be tantalizing to see these few memorials, rising here 
and there like fragments of a submerged continent, and. to 
know that they belong to a series of events or of feelings 
which are now lost to us ; and it is natural that in an age in 
which so much has been done to recover and reconstruct past 
history, complete systems should have been formed to fill up 
the chasms which intervene between one of these stepping- 
stones and another. But it is not necessary to do this for 
the sake of vindicating to criticism in this sphere that con- 
structive power which in its other branches almost all would 
now accord to it. There was a time when with far less real 
knowledge than we at present possess, it was supposed that 
nothing more remained to be known beyond the isolated facts 
on the surface of the history ; it is something now to be im- 
pressed with the sense that our information is broken and 
uncertain, to be reminded that the mere consciousness of the 
large departments of our ignorance is in itself a great acces- 
sion to our knowledge, — that of the second no less than of 
the first creation, darkness and chaos was the natural prelude 
and accompaniment. 

In the case before us that very dimness and uncertainty 
is itself a testimony to the Divine origin of the light which 
shined in the darkness and "the darkness comprehended it 
" not." It is by catching a glimpse, however partial, of 
those wild dissensions which raged around and beneath the 
Apostolical writings, that we can best appreciate the sub- 

which have undergone an interchange between the Clementines and 
the Apostolical Constitutions. 

Since the publication of this volume in 1847, the first complete 
text of the Homilies was published by Dressel, which is also given in 
Migne's Apostohcal Fathers. 



368 OIT THE DIVISIONS IN THE COEINTHIAN CHTTECH. 

lime nnity and repose of those writings themselves; it is 
by seeing how completely these dissensions have been obli- 
terated that we can best understand how marked was the 
difference between them, and analogous divisions in other 
history. We know how the names of Plato and Aristotle, 
of Erancis and Dominic, of Luther and Calvin, have con- 
tinued as the rallying-point of rival schools and systems 
long after the decease and contrary even to the intentions 
of their respective founders. But with regard to the factions 
of the Apostolical age it was not so. Hundreds of inferior 
names have been perpetuated in the history of inferior sects ; 
but the schools of Paul, and ApoUos, and Cephas, M'hich once 
waged so bitter a warfare against each other, were extin- 
guished almost before ecclesiastical history had begun ; and 
the utmost diversity of human character and outward style 
between their supposed heads has been unable to break the 
indissoluble harmony in which their memories are united in 
the associations of the Christian world. Partly this arose 
from the nature of the case. The Apostles could not have 
been the founders of systems even if they would. Their 
power was not their own but another's — " who made them 
" to differ from another ? what had they which they had not 
''received?" — If once they claimed an independent autho- 
rity, their authority was gone ; great philosophers, great 
conquerors, great heresiarchs, leave their names even in spite 
of themselves, but such the Apostles could not be without 
ceasing to be what they were, and the total extinction of the 
parties which were called after them is in fact a testimony to 
the high purpose and origin of their mission. But are we not 
also justified in believing, as has been assumed throughout 
these pages, that in the great work of reconciliation, of which 
the outward volume of the Sacred Canon is the eternal monu- 
ment, they were themselves not merely passive instruments, 
but active and conscious agents ; that a lesson is still to be 



ON THE DIYISION'S IN THE COEINTHIAN CHUECH. 369 



derived from the record which they have left of their own re- 
sistance to the claims of the factions which vainly endea- 
voured to divide what God had joined together? I have 
endeavoured to exemplify this in the case of St. Peter, and if 
the view taken in the Sermon on St. James is correct, it is 
obvious that the opposition which some have sought to find 
between him and St. Paul rests on a mistaken interpretation 
of his words. But as the one decisive testimony to the 
existence of these factions is contained in the passage from 
the Pirst Epistle to the Corinthians prefixed to this discus- 
sion, so the one decisive testimony to the " still sublimity 
''with which the Apostles rise above them" is contained 
in St. Paul's own comment upon them, with which for 
that reason the subject may most fitly be closed; whether 
we regard it as the most complete answer to the charges 
which in ancient times or in modern have been brought 
against the motives of the Apostle, or whether we turn to 
it, irrespectively of any temporary object, as the true model 
of Christian wisdom and forbearance in factious and trou- 
blous times ^. 

There we have an indisputable proof that it was not merely 
the errors or the hostilities of sect or party, but the spirit it- 
self of sect and party, even when it conferred glory on him- 
self, that the Apostle denounced as the sign of an unchristian 
or half-christian society, when he warned them that not only 
their sins or their Judaism, but their "strifes" and "divi- 
" sions" of whatever kind, were a proof that they were 
*' carnal and walked as men;" when he "transferred in a 
" figure to himself and Apollos" all that he would teach 
them of the evil of the factions generally, in order that they 
might fully understand that it was by no personal feeling 

« See Professor Jowett's Essay on " St. Paul and the Twelve." 
(Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, i. 417 — 447). 

B b 



370 ON THE DIVISIONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHUECH. 

that he was influenced, but that what he condemned he 
condemned "for their sakes" in whatever form it might be 
found, whether it made for him or against him. (1 Cor. iii. 3 ; 
iv. 6.) There too we meet with the most express contra- 
diction to the suspicions always natural to low minds, that 
a character which exercised so vast an influence must have 
been intent on self-exaltation, when he tells them that "he 
" rejoices that he had baptized none of them, but Crispus 
" and Gaius, lest any should say that he had baptized in his 
" own name;" when he conjures them "so to account of 
" him" not as an independent teacher and master, but merely 
as a subordinate "minister (vTrrjpeTas) to Christ," as a humble 
" steward" whose only object it was faithfully to expound 
" the secrets of God," not to think that their favourable 
judgment would justify him before God, but to wait pa- 
tiently to the end of all things, for "then" and not before 
" shall every man have praise of God." (1 Cor. iv. 1 — 5.) 
And there, lastly, we have the true secret of freedom from 
party-spirit, true always, but in the highest degree true of 
the Apostles, when he represents the nothingness of him- 
self and all other teachers, how wise soever, in comparison 
with the greatness of their common cause, with the recol- 
lection that they were " in Christ Jesus, who of God was 
" made unto them wisdom, and righteousness, and sancti- 
" fication, and redemption." "All things are yours," how- 
ever strong their outward contrast, " whether Paul, or Apol- 
' ' los, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death ; all are 
" yours; for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." (1 Cor. i. 
30; iii. 21, 22.) 

With these words of the great Apostle I gladly close this 
volume. They contain the sum and substance of all that I 
have endeavoured to express. To represent faithfully both 
the distinctness of character and the unity of object which 
St. Paul there sets before us, has been one chief object of 



ON THE DIYISrONS IN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. 371 

the previous pages. If I should have over-stated either the 
one or the other, I trust that the attempt may at least be of 
use in inducing others to adjust more exactly the scales of 
that balance, which cannot be disturbed without danger, 
whether in the study of the Sacred "Writings themselves, or 
in their application to our practical duties, as men, as citi- 
zens, and as Christians. 



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